First Impressions
by Allidon
Summary: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a (wife) husband." Modern Day, Pride and Prejudice AU. Hopefully not as hokey as it sounds.
1. Chapter 1

When news first breaks that the Lishman Corporation is opening one of its flagship free clinics in Canaryville, Fiona Gallagher's first reaction is one of bone-crushing relief. No more sitting up with sick kids hoping they don't get worse because she can't afford the bills, no more wanting to curl up in a ball and cry when Carl finds yet another way to break his own bones, no more panicking when Ian's medication runs out and she hasn't got the money for more. It seems like their entire lives revolve around money, how much they don't have and when more is coming in and what needs to be paid when it does. She is still haunted by the memory of last winter, sitting next to Liam's hospital bed as the doctors got his breathing regulated and she vacillated between hoping he got better and praying that the health insurance from her last job hadn't been cancelled yet. She'd been let go the day before, eight days before Christmas, and the excuses would have felt sincere if she hadn't heard them so many times before. _Cutbacks. You were last in, it's just unfortunate. We'll call you if anything else comes up._ She could recite every single one from memory.

The health insurance _had_ been cancelled, of course, which was just their shitty luck, and so they'd spent three weeks without heat, huddling into beds together to keep warm, until Carl of all people had arrived home with a bundle of torn notes and pressed them into her hand. She'd stared at him in disbelief and he'd just rolled his eyes at her and told her to get the gas turned on already, because he was fucking freezing and sick of sharing his bed with Liam. She never asked him where he got the money, or told him that she knew that Liam ended up in his bed anyway, more often than not; she'd just hugged the package he'd given her into her chest, taken a moment to breathe and blink away the exhausted tears in her eyes and then reached for the one phone they had left that hadn't been cut off.

She watches the news channel intently as they repeat the story, listening to one of the Lishmans talking about how they grew up in Chicago and felt the need to give something back to their city, and allows a tiny part of herself to hope that this is the start of things getting better.

* * *

In contrast, Frank Gallagher's first reaction is a rambling monologue about the arrogance of the rich and the pitfalls of modern medicine and how doctors think they know it all but really they're just out for all they can get. He's sitting at the bar in The Alibi, it's eleven am and already most of the regulars are in attendance, groaning as they become aware that Frank's on his high horse about something _yet again._

"Must be Wednesday," Tommy mutters under his breath, deliberately avoiding making eye contact. He knows from experience that engaging Frank when he's like this will only ruin his morning.

"_Their_ city," Frank is saying scornfully, as the news channel that Kev's set the flatscreen onto re-runs the same clip of the Lishman brothers over and over again. "They don't know shit about this city. These rich pricks think they can come here and tell us how to live our lives?"

There's a moment of silence as everyone exchanges knowing looks, and then Kermit hesitantly mentions his mother's gammy leg, his girlfriend's heart condition and Frank immediately changes direction. "Doctors," he says, pointing his beer down the bar at Kermit. "Are crooks. Making up all these bullshit diseases—and _why_? So that schmucks like us will _pay _them to cure us. Well, I'm not falling for it. We don't need their fucking charity."

"It's a _free_ clinic, Frank," Kev points out tiredly. "They're not asking for anything."

"Ah, not yet they're not." Frank's attention swings back to Kev, whose shoulders noticeably sag. "But just you wait, Kevin. Just you wait, once they've got us right where they want us then they'll stick their hands out. You mark my words…"

He rambles on for a good ten minutes, getting louder and louder with his arms waving wildly, while Kev nods and pretends to listen and Kate rolls her eyes and turns her back on them to stack the pint glasses. Frank's in the middle of a rant about the medical profession getting people hooked on drugs so that they can charge them to keep giving them out, when he pauses to try and swindle a free shot of whiskey out of Kev and then stops mid-sentence as an idea occurs to him. He's out of the door like a shot, Kev's mouth hanging open as he watches him go, and as it swings shut behind him everyone in the bar breathes a sigh of relief. Kev takes a shot for himself instead, downs it, and considers it well-deserved for having not punched Frank in the face.

* * *

Fiona's second reaction is to wonder about the possibility of maybe getting a job. She's done admin and reception work before, even if it _was_ just temping, and she's sure a venture of this size will need a good few people to deal with paperwork. It would be ideal she thinks, well-paid with good benefits, and she knows that if she can only find a way to get her foot in the door, she could be good at it. She runs a household of five kids, for fuck's sake, has done since she was seventeen, and working admin is a piece of cake in comparison. There's a sudden fire in her belly, lit by the possibility, however small, of things maybe going right for them, just this once. She scours the article that appears in the local paper the next day, but it's too focused on the fact that so many people in their neighbourhood will be able to access healthcare for the first time and the only mention of employment opportunities is in a tiny addendum at the end, with a New York phone number for anyone who might have enquiries. Her fingers fly over the phone keys, not even thinking about how much the long-distance call might cost her, and within minutes she's talking to a snooty receptionist who tells her that recruitment will be advertised nearer to the time but that she'll send out an application pack all the same. Fiona holds her breath until the line disconnects, and then whoops out loud.

* * *

Ironically, Frank's second reaction is _also_ to wonder about Fiona getting a job, although it's for entirely different reasons. He sits in the Gallagher kitchen two days later, drinking a beer he snuck from the fridge when Fiona wasn't looking, and tells her his plan. She glares at him incredulously, wondering how her father still manages to surprise her with the depths he'll sink to.

"Fuck you, Frank," she says, weaving around the kitchen as she speaks. She grabs dishes from the table and the breakfast bar and sticks them into hot water in the sink. "I am _not_ getting a job so that I can steal drugs for you." She collects laundry from the pile under the chute, shoves it into the larger pile in the corner; tries to remember whose turn it is to put it on and then sighs and accepts that she'll probably end up doing it herself. She hears Frank's intake of breath as he opens his mouth for another try and she whips round, one of Liam's t-shirts still in her hand. "I am not stealing drugs for you, period."

"Aw, c'mon Fiona." Frank adopts a self-pitying whine, one that she's heard countless times before and has long since grown immune to. "It's not a big deal. Just a couple of pills, that's all. Some Oxy, a few Perco—"

"_No, _Frank."

* * *

Ian Gallagher doesn't hear about the clinic until several days later, having been stuck in a dorm room studying furiously for a mid-term, but when it's over and he calls Lip to tell him how it went, his brother fills him in.

"It's the talk of the neighbourhood," Lip tells him. "I'm amazed they're not queuing up outside the place already."

Ian's first thought is that maybe it will take some of the pressure off Fiona, maybe it might help with the cost of his own medication among other things, and he really hopes it will. He's seen Fiona, sitting up late at night with creases etched into her forehead, dark circles under her eyes and bills spread out on the table in front of her, and he hates how unfair it all is. She had never asked for this, not that any of them had, but her burden is so much heavier than the rest of them. He and Lip help out where they can, but it's been harder since they've gone to college and have their own expenses to cover, and he knows that Debbie and Carl pull as much weight as they can, but somehow his sister just seems to look so much older and more worn every time he sees her. Ian feels like somehow a huge part of that is his fault, his stupid fucked up biology that means he can't get through the day without some ever-changing cocktail of drugs. He wonders if this clinic will help at all with that, and he really hopes so because lately, even with the medication, he feels like he's drowning and pulling Fiona and everyone else down too. He seems to trudge through his days on auto-pilot, terrified every time he feels too right or too wrong that the whole cycle is starting again, and afraid to go back to the doctor to ask about his medication in case the next one they want to try is even more expensive than the last. He's been wondering, lately, if this is what it will be like forever, if it will ever change or if at some point this will just become his new normal, and he's not sure which possibility scares him more.

* * *

It's several weeks after the announcement was first made that Jimmy Lishman and his brother make their way to Chicago. The clinic is almost done, is due to open in a couple of weeks' time, and it's been well documented that the Lishmans always ensure to oversee the opening of their clinics personally to ensure that they get off to a good start. They spend the first three days doing recruitment, interviewing for the admin staff last, and the entire Gallagher household is on tenterhooks waiting for Fiona's return.

When she comes through the door, her face gives nothing away and there's a moment of silence before Carl blurts out an impatient, "Well?" She holds the face for a few seconds more before breaking into a huge grin, and the kitchen is filled with cheers and whistles.

"Five days a week, mornings," she tells them. "It's perfect."

"What were they like?" Veronica asks her. "Because those boys looked _hot_ on the tv."

"Hey!" Kev protests from beside her, and she waves her hand at him dismissively.

"Very hot," Fiona confirms with a laugh as she takes the celebratory beer that Lip is handing her. "The older one was a bit snooty, but the younger one was nice. Friendly." She smiles a little, and Veronica wolf-whistles. Fiona pokes her tongue out. "Shut up, he's probably like that with everyone. You can all see for yourselves though, he said he'll be coming out to the Alibi to check out the local nightlife."

"Nightlife?!" Lip snorts. "He'll be in for a shock. He'll probably end up getting mugged."

* * *

Jimmy Lishman sticks to his word and on the following Friday, the packed-out Alibi falls silent at around eight-thirty when he, his brother and a third man walk through its door. Kev falls over himself to welcome them in, offers them a free drink which Jimmy declines in favour of buying a round for the whole bar instead. A rousing cheer is raised, and he finds pats on the back coming from all sides.

He makes polite conversation with everyone, smiling widely and answering even the most banal questions, but his eyes are searching the bar and when they finally find Fiona at the bar, he makes his excuses and weaves over to her. He taps her on the shoulder, offers her another drink, and she bites her lip and smiles as she agrees. Veronica leans over, whispers something in her ear that makes Fiona laugh and swat at her, and then Vee moves down the bar to talk to Kev.

Ian's sitting at a table in the corner with the rest of his siblings, and he eyes the newcomers curiously. They're ridiculously out of place—even though they look like they've attempted to dress down in jeans and casual shirts they still look hilariously over-dressed. Lishman and his brother seem nice enough, Ian thinks, and Jimmy in particular has a pleasant face with a friendly smile, although they're both a bit too clean-cut for Ian's liking.

The third man, on the other hand, is shorter than Jimmy but a little broader, with dark hair and sharp blue eyes, and looks like he has a rough edge despite his tailored clothes. Ian is intrigued; he watches him as Jimmy remains the centre of attention, notes the tension in his shoulders and how he looks like he'd rather be any place other than here. It's a total contrast to Jimmy's easy-going friendliness and his brother's polite-but-stilted conversation.

Gossip spreads quickly around the bar about the Lishmans' friend, and Ian hears so many different stories that all he knows for sure is that his name is Milkovich and he's recently inherited his family's company which means, if Ian believes what each person says to him in a conspiratorial whisper, that he is _filthy_ rich. Ian's not sure it necessarily does mean that, but the three of them are certainly richer than anyone else in the room, and pretty much every woman in the bar knows it. Several of them approach the Lishmans and although they make conversation with all of them and smiles in all the right places, it's clear Jimmy only has eyes for Fiona and news quickly spreads that the elder brother, Chip, is married with several small children and apparently takes his vows _very _seriously. There's an air of disappointment when that fact sets in, and eventually all the attention turns to their friend, despite the fact that his sour expression never cracks and he pretty much ignores each and every one of them, nursing beer after beer at the bar instead while everyone else has fun around him.

"Do you think they'd find him quite so attractive if he wasn't so rich?" Ian murmurs to Lip with a grin and Lip smirks.

"Fuck no," Lip answers with a laugh. "Can't blame them though, right? Hell, I think even I'd give it a bash if I thought I stood a chance." Ian stares at him incredulously and Lip feigns innocence. "What? For that kind of money? I'd totally do it." He pauses, considering. "Well, as long as I could be the one, y'know. Sticking it in." He makes a lewd gesture with his arm, forming a fist and punching it forward, and Ian snorts and pushes his brother's shoulder. Lip shoves him back, and they wrestle good-naturedly until Lip manoeuvres Ian down into a headlock and then ruffles his hair affectionately before releasing him. "Later, little bro'. Gonna see if I can distract some of these eyes. Can't let the rich dudes have all the fun, right?" Ian rolls his eyes and gives him a last, gentle shove and Lip slopes off, eyes tracking the room until he settles on a pretty blonde who's poking a straw at the last dregs of her drink. Ian watches as Lip turns on the charm, tells a couple of jokes until the girl can't help but laugh. They move towards the bar together, Lip spinning some sort of line about the importance of hydration, and Ian smiles faintly.

* * *

He mooches around for a bit, makes jokes with the regulars, smiles cheerfully when Fiona brings Jimmy over to introduce him to everyone, and then eventually finds himself sitting alone at the table, nursing a half-drunk beer. He's bored now, watching people pair up when he can't—he ignores the voice in the back of his mind that says _won't_ because in the Alibi at least, it's definitely can't—but although he'd rather not be here, he feels almost obliged to stay until his family is ready to leave, because inevitably at least one of them will need to be half-carried home and he'll probably be the only one who's anywhere near sober. Lip's still at the bar, with a different girl this time, Carl's got himself into some sort of drinking contest—Ian's slightly disturbed by the fact that his brother actually seems to be winning—while Debbie is dancing up a storm and Frank is trying to make conversation with the Lishmans' friend Milkovich. He's pointedly ignoring Frank's barely coherent ramblings, eventually going so far as to turn his back on Frank mid-sentence and walk away, walking straight past Ian to stand just to the side of the door to the street. Jimmy has clearly been watching too, from across the room where he's standing at Fiona's side; Ian watches as he leans in close to whisper in her ear and then slides his arm from where it's been resting loosely around her waist, taking care to do it slowly and drag his fingers across her back. She just looks at Jimmy and rolls her eyes, laughing a little, and Ian smiles. It's nice to see Fiona having fun for a change. She's smiling wider than Ian's seen in a long time, her body swaying in time to the tinny beat of the music that's playing, and Ian wonders if Jimmy realises quite how unusual that is these days.

Jimmy crosses the room and then stops in front of Milkovich, giving him a half-hearted punch to the shoulder. "What's going on, Mick?" he says, and Ian chances a glance across at them as he listens intently to their conversation. "You've been standing around with a long face all night. Come and have some fun with us."

"Seriously? In a fucking dive like this?" His tone is sneering, and Ian feels his hackles rise a little. He knows full well that the Alibi _is_ a dive, it's the kind of place that no-one would look twice at, but it's _theirs._ It's community and family and _home,_ and he resents the way that it's being so easily dismissed. He sneaks another look in time to see Jimmy frown at his friend and Milkovich glare right back at him, before gesturing towards Fiona. "Look, you've found yourself a pretty girl and I think you probably picked the best out of a _seriously_ bad bunch," he continues dismissively. "No-one here's worth my time."

"Plenty of ladies to choose from, man," Jimmy says, gesturing to the packed out bar. Milkovich scowls at him; Jimmy laughs and then adds with a good-natured grin, "or guys, y'know. Fiona's got brothers." Ian feels his eyes widen in surprise at the implication of the comment and looks down at his drink to hide the smile that's twitching at the corner of his lips. _Well, well, _he thinks. _Maybe Lip's in with a chance after all._

He chances another look up just as Jimmy is following up his comment and twisting his body to point out Lip, then Carl and finally Ian. The other man's eyes follow Jimmy's finger to each of Ian's brothers with obvious disinterest and Ian quickly looks away again as Jimmy's finger points at him. He doesn't see Milkovich's head turn but he can still pinpoint the exact moment that the other man's gaze lands on him; it's like time stops for the briefest second, his skin prickling as eyes burn into him, but it doesn't feel intrusive or creepy like it normally does when guys check him out. He's not quite sure how it feels actually, but it's something he hasn't felt for what seems like the longest time and he likes it. He likes that it feels like those eyes have been on him for hours when it's barely been seconds and he's about to look up despite himself when he feels Milkovich's gaze track away again. Ian shifts in his seat, suddenly inexplicably uncomfortable, and he strains to hear what Milkovich says next.

"The red-head's ok, I guess. Still not worth my time, man." Milkovich takes a long drink from his beer and leans nonchalantly back against the wall, picking at the label on the bottle. "Look, you're wasting your time Jim. I'm not here to pity-bang some poor kid from the projects, ok?" Ian feels heat creeping up his neck, humiliation curling in his stomach. He's been called worse before, but somehow this hits harder.

"Go have your fun with whatever-her-name-is and leave me the fuck alone, alright?" Milkovich has barely paused for breath, obviously completely unaware that Ian has heard every word. Ian is grateful for that, at least. Jimmy sighs, grips his friend's shoulder briefly, and then merges back into the crowd, seeking out Fiona again.

Ian doesn't react at first, is almost stunned at how quickly he was dismissed and how much that rejection hurts. He's not even sure why it hurts, not really. He had no intention of hooking up tonight, certainly not with Milkovich, and yet… He's suddenly overcome by an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh; he hides his smirk behind his hand and ducks off towards the bar where Lip's drinking alone, his latest companion seeming to have vanished. "Not rich enough for her, I guess," Lip shrugs when Ian asks. "It's a tough crowd tonight."

Ian rolls his eyes, orders a fresh beer and then leans in to tell Lip what he's just overheard. "That fucker!" his brother exclaims after Ian relays the conversation. "Doesn't he know who we are? Fuck, you're probably the most eligible bachelor in this place!"

"Such a shame I'm only an 'ok', then," Ian jokes as he takes a drink of his beer.

"You never know," Lip muses. "Get him drunk enough…" Ian waggles his eyebrows suggestively and then they both burst into peals of laughter.

They don't see Mickey Milkovich watching them from across the room, his mouth set in a thin, hard line.


	2. Chapter 2

Ian's prediction about drunken family members isn't too far off. By the time Kev closes up and clears everyone out, Carl is passed out under a table and Frank can barely stand. Lip and Ian take one of Frank's arms each and half-drag him home, while Kev hoists Carl over his shoulder, threatening the unconscious teen with various acts of revenge should he make the mistake of throwing up on him.

It's well after two when they pile into the Gallagher kitchen and Hannah, the teenager from down the street who's babysitting for Liam and the twins, is fast asleep on the sofa with the TV playing some bizarre late night movie to itself. Veronica heads upstairs to check on the kids while Fiona wakes the sitter gently and pays her, and then Kev drops Carl onto the sofa in Hannah's place and drives her home.

Lip and Ian deposit Frank unceremoniously onto the kitchen floor, roll him onto his side and then sit opposite each other at the table, Ian resting his head on his folded arms. His mind is racing. There's a clatter from the other side of the kitchen, and he raises his head to see Debbie pouring everyone glasses of water.

"It's to stop you getting dehydrated," she says when he asks, giving him a withering look. "Dehydration is the primary cause of hangovers."

"Well, good luck getting anything into those two Debs," Lip says, pointing at Frank and then jabbing his thumb behind him towards the living room. "We'll be lucky if Carl wakes up before tomorrow."

"He shouldn't have agreed to that stupid game," Debbie says disapprovingly, setting Ian and Lip's glasses down on the table and then handing one to Fiona as she comes back into the room.

"I can't believe he won," Ian says, and Debbie glares at him. He holds his hands up in mock surrender. "I'm just saying, Debs. The other guy was huge; his alcohol tolerance should've been sky high."

"Two hundred bucks," Lip says. "Can't go wrong." Debbie shifts her glare onto him instead, filling another glass and stomping through to the living room. They hear her talking to Carl, trying to rouse him, and then eventually his voice filters through too. Debbie's nothing if not persistent.

"It was a good night though," Fiona says from the doorway, a soft smile on her face. "It was nice to have some fun for a change."

"Yeeeaaah we all know what kind of fun you'll be having," Veronica teases, coming down the stairs into the kitchen, and Fiona smirks a little.

"Maybe," she says. "He's nice. You thought he was nice, right?" She looks suddenly anxious, her eyes flashing from Veronica to her brothers and back again.

"Hell yeah," Veronica says. "He was nice, and rich, and fucking hot. Everything you need, right there."

There's a snuffling sound from the floor and Frank suddenly speaks up, sounding half-asleep. "His friend…was _rude._"

Fiona looks surprised. "Who, Mickey? I think maybe he's just shy? Jimmy said they've been friends for years, and I'm sure they wouldn't be if he was such a bad guy."

"Yeah, shy," Lip snorts. "You should've heard what he said about Ian." Ian feels colour stain his cheeks as all the eyes in the room fall on him. He's had another beer since he'd over-heard the conversation between Jimmy and his friend, and the sting of what Milkovich had said has mostly abated, but he still doesn't want to bring it up. He kicks Lip under the table. Lip carries on, undeterred. "Called him a 'pity-bang from the projects'."

Fiona's face twists in anger. "He said what?!" She turns to Ian, outraged. "Is that really what he said?"

"Yeah," Ian says, forcing a laugh out. He figures laughing it off is the quickest way to change the subject. "'_He's ok I guess_,'" he says, mimicking Milkovich's deeper voice and the dismissive tone he'd used. "'_But still not_—'" He snorts out another laugh, a more genuine one this time. "'—_not worth my time._'"

Ian and Lip dissolve into laughter again but Fiona still looks enraged. "Not worth his time, huh?"

"It's fine," Ian says, and he almost means it. "I didn't think much of him, either." He definitely means that.

"Well," she says. "When he realises his mistake, I hope you fucking turn him down. A pity-bang, my ass."

"I wouldn't worry Fiona," Ian says, with a grin. "I think I can safely promise you that I will _never_ go out with Mickey Milkovich."

* * *

Mickey spends the journey back to the Lishmans' house in sullen silence, tuning out Jimmy's animated chat as best he can. He's talking about Fiona, telling Chip various stories that he picked up from the bar, talking about Fiona some more and Mickey finds that he's really not in the mood for it. He just wants to get back to the house, go to bed and forget about that red-headed kid. Especially forget about that red-headed kid's arms. And his ass. And the image of him and his brother laughing over some apparently hilarious anecdote, which had left Mickey with the nagging feeling that he was the subject of their ridicule.

He's suddenly aware of Chip talking to him. "I think you'll agree with me, Mickey?"

"Huh?" He's caught off guard, something he hates even with Jimmy and Chip.

Chip frowns at him. "I said, I think you'll agree with me, that place is the biggest dump we've ever been to. Jim, I think you've found a whole new low."

"I thought it was quaint," Jimmy says defensively. "And the people were lovely."

Mickey snorts. "_Quaint?_ Listen, quaint is little cottages with thatched roofs, or villages with no electricity. Quaint is _not_ some dive bar in the South Side of Chicago where you happened to meet the latest love of your life."

"Didn't meet her there," Jimmy shoots back with a playful grin, and Mickey waves him off.

"Whatever. Still doesn't make it fucking quaint."

Jimmy sighs. "I don't get it, Mick. Why are you so determined to hate everything?"

"Why are _you_ so determined to see the best in everything, huh?" The counter flies back without a pause for thought; it's an argument that's been well-hashed out between them in the years that they've been friends.

"Well, _I _think Fiona is lovely, and there's nothing you can say to change my mind." Jimmy's tone is determined, and Mickey just rolls his eyes and watches the streets pass out of the window.

"She's hot, I'll give you that," Chip concedes. "But the rest of them? Her _father_?! The guy probably has more alcohol in his body than blood."

Mickey silently agrees. He'd mostly ignored the old drunk's ramblings, but he'd heard enough to know that the Gallagher patriarch wasn't someone that any of them would want to be further acquainted with.

* * *

Fiona starts her new job on the following Monday. She gets up an hour earlier than usual, shampoos her hair three times just to be sure, spends almost forty-five minutes blow-drying and straightening it, and then hates it and pulls it into a ponytail instead. It's marginally better, she supposes. She stares at the smart office wear that she and Veronica had shopped for, and when she puts it on she feels oddly uncomfortable, like a child playing dress-up. She's suddenly not at all convinced that she can pull this off.

She's well aware that a large part of the reason Jimmy offered her the job is because he fancied her, she's not stupid enough to try and convince herself otherwise, but at the time she'd felt that it had just been an added extra, that she'd interviewed well and shown initiative and made herself look employable. Now, staring at herself in the mirror with her scraped back hair and conservative make-up and sensible earrings, she wonders how she could possibly been so stupid. There is no way she can possibly do this job.

She grips the edge of the dresser so hard that her knuckles turn white, trying to take deep breaths as the panic rises. _You can do this,_ she tells herself. _You've done it plenty of times before._

By the time she gets downstairs, the breakfast routine is in full swing without her—Debbie's got pancakes cooking on the stove-top and Carl's pouring juice and digging through the clean laundry to find a shirt for Liam. She's so grateful for them on days like this, so happy that she must have done something right somewhere along the line because the six of them stick together and they take care of each other and muck in without question. _You can do this,_ she tells herself again, and this time she almost believes it.

Debbie looks up then, noticing Fiona standing on the bottom step, and she grins. "Figured you'd be distracted today," she says, shaking the pan a little. "Pancakes?"

* * *

She settles into the job quicker than she could have imagined, finds this kind of thing second nature. She files and she organises and she figures out the computer system and it feels _good._

She doesn't see Jimmy until her fourth day, by which time she's feeling fairly confident about her performance. It's mid-morning, and she's in the middle of a phone call with a particularly demanding patient who isn't happy with any of the appointments she's offering him, when he plants himself in front of her desk. She makes the mistake of looking up just as the guy on the phone finishes the long, meandering explanation of why next Monday just doesn't work for him, and Fiona is so distracted by Jimmy's face that she forgets she's supposed to respond.

"Uh, Miss? Miss?"

"Right, sorry sir," she says quickly, and she tucks the handset between her shoulder and ear, holds her finger up at Jimmy, and starts tapping through the appointment schedule again. "Well, I have one on Tuesday, at 4.30?"

"No, I can't do Tuesday evening, that's bowling night and I…" He goes off again, telling her long it takes to get to the alley on the L and she tunes him out, chancing another look up at Jimmy. He can obviously hear every word because he's trying to suppress a laugh, his lips pressed together in amusement, and then he leans over and hits the disconnect button. She's too shocked to speak for a moment, not quite believing that Jimmy Lishman, her _boss,_ just hung up on a fucking patient.

"Guy sounded like an ass," he says, and she bursts out laughing.

"Yeah, he kinda was," she admits. "That was the fourth appointment I've offered him."

"Well," Jimmy says, thoughtfully, like this is some huge mystery they're solving together. "Maybe he's secretly terrified of doctors?"

She laughs again. "Maybe," she says. "Either that or one of my brothers put him up to it as a joke. Wouldn't put it past them."

He chuckles. "Sounds like the brotherly thing to do," he says. "The first day of my residency, Chip got one of his college buddies to turn up at the ER with the most ridiculous list of symptoms. I was freaking out, had no idea what was wrong with him and too embarrassed to go ask for help." He starts reeling off the symptom list, mimicking exactly how his brother's friend had acted as he'd added each one, and she's having so much fun that before she know it it's one-fifteen and her shift's almost over.

"Have dinner with me tonight?" he asks, and she's laughing so hard that she doesn't even think about her answer before she agrees.

* * *

The restaurant they go to that evening is so far removed from her normal life that she has to pinch herself; the waiters are all in black tie and standing straight, shoulders back with elbows pointing out at sharp angles, half the items on the menu are unpronounceable and the wine Jimmy orders costs more than she gets paid in a week. She's so nervous that she downs the first glass of wine in almost one mouthful and then chokes, her cheeks burning. She feels awkward and out of place, sits stiffly in the seat and tries to work out which fork to use when and where to put her napkin and which topics of conversation are suitable for somewhere like this. Everything she says sounds stilted and false, and suddenly all she wants is to go home and take this stupid dress off.

"Sorry," Jimmy says in the car on the way home. "Too much, right?"

"Maybe a little," she says apologetically, offering him a little half-smile.

"I guess I just wanted to impress you," he says. "I'll tone it down next time, I promise."

"Next time, huh?" she teases, and the half-smile becomes a real one.

He looks across at her, frowning. "Well, I mean. If you wanted to…"

She shrugs, acts casual. "Well, I suppose I could try and fit you in," she says, and he laughs.

"Good," he says. "Good."

* * *

It becomes a regular thing, although she doesn't let herself think of it that way. He's as good as his word, tones it down—it still feels toned-up to her, but it's at a level she can cope with and actually starts to enjoy—and she starts to relax again and enjoy his company. He really is a nice guy, she realises, kind and funny and well aware of how lucky he is. He explains to her, one night in an upmarket bar, that the free clinics initiative had been his idea, how he'd been fourteen and watched a documentary about healthcare and it had been the first time he realised that so many people couldn't afford any. "I went and asked my dad why," he says. "And he said it was just the way things were. I don't accept that."

She likes him a lot and that scares her, because liking leads to caring and caring leads to love and she learned a long time ago that love is a word used to excuse people hurting you. Monica loved her and Frank loved her and so many men she can't even count loved her but they all hurt her or left her or both and she's stopped letting herself hope for anything more. So she smiles and she laughs and she enjoys the fancy restaurants and exclusive nightclubs that he takes her to, but she reminds herself that it's temporary, that he will leave sooner or later, and she refuses to let herself feel.

They're in the backseat of his car—some impressive, fancy kind that Carl had almost swooned over the first time he parked it outside their house—when she first realises that maybe she wasn't being as clever as she thought she was. They're parked beside the lake, ostensibly to enjoy the view although they both knew that the view probably wouldn't get much of a look-in, and she's on top of him, her skirt hitched up around her hips, her movements fast and frenzied. He keeps trying to slow her down, holding her tightly against him and thrusting up into her instead, and it's like a battle of wills between them, her pulling back and speeding up and then him pulling her close again and kissing her, soft and gentle with his hand in her hair. There's a flutter in her stomach that she's trying to ignore, and then he pulls away just enough that she can see the look in his eyes. His pupils are dilated, although she's seen his eyes darker, and there's something else there besides lust.

"Fiona—" he starts to say, his voice hoarse, and panic rises in her throat.

"Shut up," she says, and pushes him back against the seat, buries her head in the crook of his shoulder and then she's moving again, hard and fast. He doesn't stop her this time, gasping against her ear as he gets closer, and she's glad. She doesn't want to think about this right now. She bites down on his shoulder when she comes, swallows the noise that she almost made, and then he thrusts up once, twice, and he's coming too and she sags against him.

They stay there for a few minutes, heavy breathing the only noise between them, and then she feels him inhale like he's about to speak. She gets in first. "We should be getting back," she says softly, with a hint of regret.

He doesn't argue, just nods and pushes her hair back off her face and places a chaste kiss on her lips, and then she slides out of his lap, rakes around for her underwear and pulls her skirt back down while he pulls off the condom, tying it in a knot, and zips his trousers back up. He doesn't try to talk again.

She lets his hand rest on her thigh as he drives her home, and for the next two days all she can think about is what he might have been about to say.

* * *

"He probably just wanted to tell you that his leg was cramping up," Veronica jokes when Fiona finally tells her what's been on her mind. They're drinking coffee in Fiona's kitchen, and Fiona is quieter than usual, quiet enough that her friend had badgered her until she'd finally given in. She barely cracks a smile at Veronica's quip, her eyebrows pulled together in a frown. "What are you so afraid of," Veronica asks, and her face is suddenly serious. "That he might actually like you?"

"No," Fiona says, but she sounds unconvincing even to herself. "I don't know. Maybe?"

"Would it really be such a bad thing if he did?"

_Yes,_ Fiona thinks, but she doesn't answer, just stares into her coffee instead.

"_Fiona,_" Veronica says. "He's a nice guy. You deserve this. You gotta let someone in, sometime right? Why not him?"

"Because…" Fiona doesn't even know how to explain it. Because he _is_ a nice guy. Because she might actually like him. Because he doesn't belong here and he's going to realise that at some point, get bored of his little vacation in the South Side, go back to his penthouse in New York and his fancy office at his family's firm and start planning another clinic somewhere else. Because 'enjoying it while it lasts' is kind of dependent on her _not _caring. "I've got the kids to worry about," she says instead. It's a handy excuse. "I'm not looking for anything serious or—"

Veronica cuts her off with a withering look. "Kids my ass," she says. "Lip and Ian are at college more than they are here."

"They'll be back at the weekend for the summer," Fiona says. "And Lip's finished for good." Veronica rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, and they can take care of their own asses. Same goes for Debbie and Carl." Fiona opens her mouth and Veronica holds her hand up. "No. The only kid you got left is Liam, and soon enough he won't need you either. He's got five brothers and sisters to look out for him, not just you. It's about damn time you started thinking about yourself, girl, and stop using those kids as a wall to keep people out."

Fiona hates it when Veronica's right.

* * *

Ian and Lip come home that weekend, with bags full of dirty laundry and summer plans that actually sound responsible, instead of reminiscent of their teenage years stealing lasers and selling weed out of an ice cream van. Fiona's sort of proud and wistful all at once. Lip's picking up some casual work while he looks for an internship, hopefully one that will lead to a proper job—"finally start pulling my weight," he says to Fiona—and Ian's got three summer jobs lined up. Between the three of them, and Debbie and Carl's contributions, the squirrel fund is bulging by the second week of their stay. It's a nice feeling, but Fiona can't seem to drop the habit of cutting coupons and shopping for the cheapest food she can find. _Next week,_ she thinks. _Next week we'll splash out. When we've saved another $500. Another $1000._

The third week after the boys come home, there's a barbecue on an abandoned patch of land next to the L tracks. No-one's really sure whose idea it is first but it spirals and by mid-morning on a hot, sweaty Saturday, the waste ground has been filled with trestle tables and foldable chairs. Kev's donated several large kegs of beer and there are numerous ice-filled bins with booze and soft drinks, along with multiple grills—everyone seems to have brought their own—and enough food to feed all of Canaryville for a week. This was the kind of shit the community all participated in, and they did it better than anyone else.

The Gallaghers are already there when the Lishman party arrives. Ian hasn't seen any of them since that first night in the Alibi and he's glad, if he's honest. He feels like they're from another world, one that doesn't have any place trying to mesh with his own. He watches them pull up in their fancy car, step out in their fancy preppy clothes and designer sunglasses, looking like they've been ripped out of some stupid fashion magazine, and it only makes that thought firmer in his mind. They didn't belong here. Jimmy pops the trunk open, chatting animatedly to his brother, and then they turn to the field and start to cross to where the tables are. Jimmy and Chip are each bearing a crateful of fancy shit that Ian is pretty sure no-one will touch, and Mickey has a cooler, filled with bottled beer by the looks of it. Once again, he looks like he'd rather be anywhere than here and Ian half-wonders if the alcohol he's carrying is all for himself.

Kev's over to welcome them in an instant, directing them to the table where Veronica is laying out the food. Once they've deposited the crates he shakes all of their hands enthusiastically, a huge, genuine smile on his face, and waves his arm out to the gathering, telling them to mingle. Jimmy's just as jovial as Kev is, makes his rounds greeting all the people he met at the Alibi while Chip and Mickey load up plates from the food that they brought, take beers from Mickey's cooler and stand awkwardly to eat rather than take a seat. It irrationally annoys Ian, feels like they're placing themselves above everyone else, as if the food and drink and people here aren't good enough for them. _They probably aren't,_ he thinks, and it annoys him even more.

* * *

He and Lip are sitting a short while later, loaded down paper plates and cheap plastic cups of beer in hand, watching Fiona and Jimmy as they swipe food off each others' plates and laugh.

"Seems to be going well," Lip comments.

"Yeah," Ian agrees, picking at the food on his plate with not much intention of actually eating. "She seems to like him a lot."

"Well, she could maybe try showing it a little," Lip muses. "She's hardly breaking out the big guns."

Ian laughs, and then the laughter fades as he realises that Lip is deadly serious. "Really?" he says, his tone sceptical.

"What?" Lip is unapologetic. "Look, he's a nice guy right? He's kind to her and he takes her places and he's—"

"Rich?" Ian says dryly.

"That's not what I was gonna say," Lip insists. "But yeah, he's got money. He'd take care of her."

"She can take care of herself," Ian points out. "And she barely fucking knows him."

"It's been what, six weeks? And Debbie says they go out like two or three times a week. She's gotta know him pretty well by now."

"Six weeks is nothing," Ian says. "She went out with that Dave guy for almost a year, and she never knew he'd been cheating on her the whole time."

"It's enough for her to stake a claim at least." Lip sounds thoughtful now, his eyes still fixed on his older sister.

Ian stares at Lip. "You sound like Frank." Lip glares at him, but Ian's unapologetic. "I'm serious. You're talking like him, all this talk of marrying the rich guy and staking claims on people. Maybe she doesn't _want _to marry Jimmy? Maybe he doesn't want to marry her? He's a person, not a prize in a raffle."

Lip shrugs. "It's the best odds she's ever gonna get."

"Jesus," Ian says. "It's not the fucking 1800s. She doesn't need to find some rich guy to bail her out. Give her a chance to figure it out for herself."

"Hey, I'm just saying," Lip says. "She seems to like him is all. She could do a hell of a lot worse."

Ian doesn't answer, just looks back at Fiona. She _could_ do a lot worse, he supposes, but maybe she could do better, or maybe she was fine with things as they were. He figures she'll deal with it in her own time. He's not sure where Lip's coming from at all, why he seems suddenly so eager to marry Fiona off. It strikes him as thoroughly odd.

They sit in companionable silence for a while, and Ian people watches. Everyone seems to be having a great time, they're all some degree of drunk or on their way there, and someone's playing dance music from a souped-up sound system in one of the cars; he spots Debbie in the thick of the dancers, red hair flying as she commands the attention of a good half-a-dozen men, most of whom are, in Ian's older-brother opinion, far too old for her. He wonders how she and Carl grew up so suddenly, feels like maybe he blinked and missed a couple of years. In some ways, he supposes that he did.

He looks away, keen to banish the path his thoughts are going on, and immediately his eyes pick out Frank instead. His father has taken up residence beside one of the kegs, of course, and is regaling anyone who'll listen with tales of how his daughter has struck lucky; Ian can hear and lip-read enough to get the gist of the bragging and the self-congratulation, and he cringes.

"That Milkovich dude is staring at you," Lip says, suddenly.

Ian looks up automatically, his eyes tracking across to where Mickey is standing. He's alone now—Ian wonders where Chip's gone—and Ian sees that Lip is right; although the other man averts his eyes quickly it's clear that he _was_ looking over at them. Ian frowns in a strange mixture of confusion and annoyance, and turns back to Lip. "No idea why," he says. "Maybe he's trying to intimidate us?" Lip shrugs. "I wish he hadn't bothered coming," Ian says. "He brings the mood down."

"Ain't that the truth," Lip says. "Looks more like he's at a fucking funeral."

Ian hums in response, eyes still tracking the field until he finds Carl who is…about to put on an impromptu fireworks show. Of course he is. Ian sighs, pulls himself up straight in his chair and gestures towards Carl. Lip rolls his eyes, and they stand in unison, ready to double-team their kid brother before he causes someone—probably himself—some serious damage.

* * *

Lip circles round to the left and Ian moves to the right in hopes that they can catch Carl from either side before he notices them approaching. They move almost in parallel to each other, until they're almost halfway there and suddenly he hears Kev calling his name, just as he grabs his arm and pulls him off his path. Ian turns as Kev tugs at him, and finds himself face-to-face with Mickey Milkovich.

It's the first time Ian's seen him up close and he has to take a minute because, to Mickey's credit, he's good-looking. Really good-looking. He looks him up and down, takes in well-defined arm muscles that he probably got from a gym instead of pull-ups in a doorway, notes the way that his clothes hug his body in all the right places, lingers over slim, muscular legs. He's distracted by the movement as Mickey flexes his fingers, and Ian has that thought again about rough edges, because Mickey's got that look about him that you might never be sure if he's going to kiss you or punch you in the face. Right now, Ian almost wants to punch _him_ in the face because all he can hear is _pity-bang_ and he really wishes the guy wasn't so attractive.

"Ian, did you meet Mickey yet?" Kev's saying, but Ian's too busy fixing the strongest glare he can muster on the shorter man. "I was just saying, he's not gonna meet anyone if he doesn't mingle, right? Mickey, this is Ian, Fiona's brother."

Mickey nods at him, and Ian sets his jaw and then offers the slightest incline of his head in response. He notices that Mickey looks about as uncomfortable as Ian feels, and he gets a sliver of satisfaction from that. _Good, _he thinks. _Serves you right._

Kev's still talking, trying to get them to strike up a conversation, and Ian tries to edge away only for Kev to reel him back in. "Hey, Ian just a couple of minutes, right? Can't be letting our guests stand around alone." Ian cringes at the word 'guests', is about to make his excuses and explain about Carl, when Mickey suddenly speaks.

"You, uh, you want a beer?" He's chewing on his lip a little as he asks the question, gesturing to the cooler at his feet, flicking his eyes up to make contact with Ian's just as he finishes the question. Ian's struck by how bright they are, close-up like this and reflecting the sunlight.

He's lost for words for a second, not quite sure how to respond. "No," he says shortly. "No thanks, I need to go and deal with..." He gestures vaguely in the direction he'd been walking towards Carl, wondering if Lip's gotten to him yet. Mickey shrugs, looking disinterested again, and Ian turns and walks swiftly away. He can feel Mickey's eyes burning into his back as he goes.


	3. Chapter 3

Ian spends the first half of the following week strangely on edge, like there's something bothering him but he can't quite out his finger on what it is. He wakes up two hours early on Sunday, mind racing, but instead of getting up he stays determinedly in bed, staring at the ceiling. It's not a problem if he doesn't get up, he tells himself as he wills his leg to stop twitching. It's just a blip.

His mind is connecting dots that shouldn't match, connecting _twink_ to _pity-bang_ and faceless old men to Mickey Milkovich, and then it's finding images of Mickey looking up at him from under his eyelashes while he offers him a beer and Ian's really not sure what to make of any of it. All he knows is that he dislikes Mickey _intensely,_ feels like he judges everything around him unfairly and by his own, ridiculously high standards, and Ian's not sure he's ever met anyone quite as stand-offish before.

He gets up at six, like he does every day, and starts his routine. He takes his meds, grabs a shower before everyone else starts pounding at the door and then he goes for a run. It isn't until afterwards that he realises that he forgot to eat breakfast first.

He finds something grounding in running, something in the way that his feet connect with the ground as they pound against it that helps anchor him down. He's onto the fourth mile of his run when he finally feels it, that sense of being attached to solid ground again, that feeling where the world slots into place. It's twice as long as it usually takes and he resents it, feels like he needs to run twice as long to make up for it. It can go too far the other way, and he's well aware that when he starts to push himself further, harder, faster, that it's probably not a good thing, but right now he's not sure he even cares. There's too many thoughts in his head, intrusive and taking over, and as he runs he pushes them out, stamps them down with every step, leaves them behind.

* * *

Ian's supposed to have a routine, and for the rest of the week he sticks to it even more rigidly than usual. It's finely tuned, has been tampered with and refined until he got to this point, and now he clings to it like a safety blanket, with the belief that by sheer force of will he'll work through this before it escalates.

Four days a week, he works at a McDonald's on the North Side, ten 'til four. It's easy enough, but exhausting, dashing back and forth. He's pretty certain that he flips burgers in his sleep, it's become so ingrained in him. He doesn't mind it though, the people there are good to joke around with and they don't ask questions.

It's Friday, and he's an hour into his third shift of the week when Joe, his shift manager, brings over a pair of new recruits that Ian can tell straight away are management trainees. They're kitted out far too well to be working there, even in management, and Ian knows that after one shift in the kitchen they'll rethink their wardrobe. Joe introduces them as Robbie and Jess, and Ian nods and makes nice, and then Joe makes the predicted request for Ian to train them in the kitchen. Ian agrees easily, mostly because it makes a change from the usual routine and he's sick of everything, everywhere being stuck in a routine.

He puts on his best 'model employee' act, explains to them at length the safety procedures and the hygiene regulations and what needs cleaned when, and they take it all in, nodding and smiling. Jess actually takes notes in a spiral bound notepad that she clearly bought for the purpose, while Robbie just watches Ian, nodding carefully and grinning every time Ian makes the same lame, tired jokes that were peddled to him in his own training.

When they finally start actually preparing food, Ian decides that Jess probably won't last the month. She does everything at arms length, turns up her nose at the smell of grease that permeates the kitchen, grips everything between pinched fingers as if she thinks it might permeate her too if she touches too much. Robbie's harder to make a guess at though; there's a sort of roguish charm to him and he tackles everything with boyish enthusiasm, full of wide grins and easy conversation. Ian finds he chats back, and laughs even, with an ease he hasn't felt since…well, for a long time. It's a nice feeling, actually. He thinks that maybe he's missed it a little.

* * *

When he gets home that evening, Lip is out with some girl or another and Fiona's getting ready for a date with Jimmy. He almost collides with her as she comes out of the bathroom, still wet and wrapped in a towel, and he notes that she's even tenser than usual.

"You ok, Fi?" he asks her, reaching out and squeezing her shoulder as she turns towards her room.

"Huh?" She turns back, clearly distracted, and then gives him a half-smile. "Yeah, I'm good," she says. He narrows his eyes at her, and she sighs. "Just…well, what do you think of Jimmy?"

Ian's surprised she's asking, but he answers her as honestly as he can. "He seems like a good guy," he says, a little hesitant. "I mean, you like him, right? That's what matters."

She nods thoughtfully, and then smiles, big and bright. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah I do. He's nice, and funny, and he makes me feel good." She pauses, leans against the wall. "Lip thinks I'm holding back too much."

Ian frowns. _Fucking Lip_. "Well," he says. "What do _you_ think?"

She sighs. "Maybe I am? I don't know. I just…what if it doesn't work out, you know?"

"Well I guess you just gotta take that risk, right?" he says. "If you like him, like really like him, then you should go for it. And hey," he adds, grinning widely. "If he hurts you, me and Lip will kill him for you."

She laughs at that, suddenly reaches for him and pulls him into a hug. "I don't know what I'd do without you guys," she whispers in his ear, her voice cracking a little.

"We're a team, right?" he says as he hugs her back. "This is just what we do." He releases her, giving her a gentle push down the hall. "Go on, get ready" he says. "And take your time, I'll fix dinner."

He makes macaroni for dinner, alternating between stirring the pot and helping Carl with a book report he's supposed to do over the summer to help get his grade up, and then the four younger siblings sit down to eat together at the table. Debbie is in the middle of a story about some guy one of her friends has been seeing when Jimmy arrives, and he hangs out in the kitchen with them for a good twenty minutes while Fiona finishes getting ready. Ian finds himself warming towards the other man; Jimmy's a good guy, funny and kind-hearted, and he wonders if maybe Lip's right and this one might be a keeper. When Fiona comes down the stairs, dressed in a tight red dress with her hair around her shoulders, Jimmy's face lights up like nothing Ian's ever seen. He thinks he'd do pretty much anything to have someone look at him like that.

* * *

Fiona calls him a little after seven the next morning, her voice a little groggy like she just woke up.

"Hey," she says. "I'm so sorry, I fell asleep at Jimmy's."

"It's no big deal," he says, and he means it. This is a step forward, and he's pleased for her. "Lip stayed out too. You ok?"

"Yeah," she says, although she sounds a little unsure. "Yeah, I'm good. Um, Jimmy was asking if I could maybe stay for a few days?"

He laughs. "What are you asking me for?"

He can feel her frowning at him over the phone. "I just don't want to dump everything on you and Lip," she says. "I can come home if you need me to." She sounds unsure, and Ian wonders if maybe she's hoping he'll tell her to come back.

"We'll be fine," he tells her instead. "You want me to bring you some stuff?"

"Yeah, if you wouldn't mind?" Her voice is a little brighter now, like she's relaxed a little. "Just some clothes and stuff? Oh, and my cell phone charger?"

"No problem," he tells her, and finds a scrap of paper to note down the address on. "I'm at work 'til four, so it'll be after that."

"Thanks, Ian," she says. "I really appreciate it."

* * *

His shift that day is possibly one of the best days he's had there. It's busy but not overly so, and Robbie and Jess are back, wearing less expensive clothes, as Ian predicted. Ian and Robbie chat the shift away easily enough; they crack jokes and talk sports and debate some stupid shit they hear on the news over the crackly radio. They swap music recommendations on their smoke break, Ian tending towards indie rock and Robbie towards harder stuff, and they listen through the tinny speakers on their phones. It's fun, and Ian feels his guard slip a little further.

He's a little late leaving, and he grabs the bus to Jimmy's just as it's about to pull away, realising ten minutes in that it's the wrong route. He hops off, checks the GPS on his phone, and decides he might as well walk rather than hang around for another bus.

He regrets the decision barely two minutes later, when the first fat raindrop falls. He's wearing nothing but jeans and a thin t-shirt, and when the downpour really starts, he's soaked through within minutes. He quickens his pace, breaking into a half jog and then a run, his head tucked down to stop the rain hitting his face. He rounds the corner into Jimmy's street, looks up to check the house numbers and then sprints for the last few yards. He knocks, waits, and then knocks again harder.

There's a muffled shout from inside, the rattling of keys, and then Mickey opens the door.

* * *

Mickey is having a really shitty day, mostly. He's been video conferencing all day, which he hates more than actual conferencing, and he's got two subsidiary companies that are probably about to go bust. He's pretty sure he's not cut out for this CEO business, it's not his thing at all, but he can hear his dad's voice in his head, talking about how this company is his legacy and how important the family name is and how Milkoviches never back down, and so he grits his teeth and makes the calls he needs to make, plays nice for the shareholders, pretends like he doesn't hate all of this and long for the time when he had dreams of his own.

He's just finishing up a scathing email to the director of a third, failing subsidiary when he hears the knock at the door. He ignores it, given that he's busy and it's not even his fucking house, but it's insistent and getting louder and eventually he shoves his chair away from the desk and stomps downstairs, yelling for Jimmy as he goes. He guesses that his friend is holed up somewhere in the house with Fiona, and he makes a mental note to give that whole situation some thought later on. It's getting too serious for Mickey's liking, and the last thing he wants is for his friend's good nature to be taken advantage of, even if the guy is too lazy to open his own front door. He fumbles the keys as he thinks and then yanks the door open with far more force that is necessary, only for his stomach to clench when he finds Ian Gallagher standing in front of him on the doorstep, dripping wet and skin near enough gleaming.

His hair is wet, darkened by the rain, and it's hanging in his eyes, dripping down over his face, his cheeks red and shiny. Ian swipes at it, clearly annoyed, and then Mickey catches his eyes and he can't look away. They're beautiful, green flecked through with hazel, but he knew that already; now they're brightened by exercise and they're staring straight back at him and there's rain clinging to his eyelashes. Ian's towering over him, glaring down at him like Mickey's committed some huge crime, and all he wants to do is make a sarcastic comment and get the hell out of there but he can't take his eyes off the taller man's face.

"Mickey," Ian says shortly, by way of a greeting.

Mickey acknowledges it with a quick movement of his eyebrows, and Ian shakes his head in what Mickey presumes to be annoyance—although he has no clue why Ian might be mad at him—and then shifts awkwardly, looks over his shoulder at the street before continuing. "I, um, I came to see Fiona. I've got some stuff she needed." There's an overnight bag in his hand that he jiggles a little, as if to prove the point.

"And what, you ran all the way here? In the _rain_?" It comes out sharper than he intends, like an accusation, and Ian frowns at him.

"No," he says drily. "I just go everywhere dripping wet like this." He sighs and drops the frown. "I took the bus and got caught in the rain." He gives Mickey a pointed glare, and Mickey steps back, waving his arm out in a sarcastic welcome gesture.

Ian gives a terse nod in response, the frown returning, and then moves past him into the hallway. Mickey grips the door handle, unable to look away from the way that Ian's wet clothes are clinging to every contour of his body. He swallows hard, so hard that he can almost hear it, and he's convinced Ian must have too because Ian chooses just that moment to turn and look at him, frown still etched onto his face.

"So, is Fiona here?" he asks, and just at that moment Jimmy and Fiona emerge from the back of the house. They're giggling a little, hair all messed up, and Jimmy's shirt is buttoned up wrong and Fiona's is inside out. Mickey makes a mental note never to sit on the sofa in that room again.

He scowls as they greet Ian with big smiles, slams the door shut and marches back up the stairs to finish his email. They'll have a whole houseful of Gallaghers at this rate, he thinks crossly, and then finds his mind wandering back to Ian's back muscles under his wet t-shirt. His cock, fucking treacherous body part that it is, apparently likes that image and his scowl deepens. He sends the email and then takes a cold shower, standing under the spray until his teeth are near enough chattering and he's covered in goose pimples. It doesn't help at all.

* * *

Jimmy insists Ian stay for dinner, and after the third time Ian tries to say, "no, it's fine, really," he gives in and accepts the offer. He takes the hot shower Jimmy offers too, while his clothes are drying.

The Lishmans' house is like nothing he could have imagined, light and airy with luxurious furnishings, and the shower Jimmy directs him to in his own en-suite is no exception. The water goes hotter than theirs ever gets at home, and the pressure is a revelation. It's possibly the most invigorating shower he's ever experienced and he stays under the water for far too long, letting his mind wander.

When he gets out, his clothes are still nowhere to be seen, so he dries himself off and wraps the huge towel Jimmy had produced from a cupboard around his waist. He slips out of the bedroom, and pads down the hallway towards the stairs, only to come face to face with Mickey as he exits his own bedroom. Ian stops dead, suddenly aware of his nakedness and not at all sure what to do, and Mickey glares at him hard, as if he's done something wrong. Ian glares back, because he fucking hasn't actually and it's really annoying that Mickey's acting like he has, and then he notices that Mickey's hair is damp and that he's changed his clothes from the suit and tie he'd been wearing when he opened the door to a more casual shirt, dark blue and soft looking, and well-fitting dark jeans. He looks…really fucking good actually, and Ian has to will himself not to follow that thought train any further. Mickey's eyes flick down Ian's body, and then back up to his face, and then down again, and then he pulls himself up a little taller, throws his shoulders back. He raises his eyebrows, nods and then turns towards the stairs. Ian can't help but watch him go.

* * *

Ian gives it a couple of minutes before he goes downstairs himself, and when he does he finds Fiona alone, curled up on the sofa. "Hey," she says, looking up from the book she's reading. "Shit, you all done? I'll see if your clothes are ready."

He pads after her, marvelling at the kitchen as they pass through on their way to the utility room, and when she stops in front of the dryer he nudges her playfully.

"Y'know," he says, nodding back towards the kitchen. "I think your Jimmy might be a keeper after all."

She shifts uncomfortably as she pulls his clothes out, and checks to make sure they're dry. "He's not _my_ Jimmy," she says finally, as she hands them over.

"Oh, I dunno," Ian counters. "I think maybe he might be. I mean, that's why you're here, right? Taking the risk?"

"I guess so," she says softly, leaning against the counter. "But it doesn't make him mine."

"Not yet," Ian says, pulling his boxers on under the towel. "But eventually?"

"Yeah," she says, and she smiles a little. "Yeah, I think maybe eventually."

* * *

Mickey arrives at the table just as dinner is served and he takes the seat opposite Ian, seemingly without thinking because the minute he looks up and sees the redhead opposite him, he averts his gaze again, staring down at the table instead. Ian feels that same irritated feeling as before, because he's got no idea what he's ever done to make Mickey dislike him so much as he clearly does.

Jimmy chatters away as if the growing animosity isn't obvious, asks Ian about school and what he's majoring in and what he wants to do after. Ian's uncomfortable as he answers, because much as he's got this a new plan now, with a new set of goals in place, he still longs for the old ones a lot of the time. He still feels the army deep in his bones, and somehow he doesn't think that anything can ever replace it.

The whole time he's looking at Jimmy, telling him about how he's studying physiotherapy and hopes to maybe help army veterans eventually, he's pretty sure that Mickey is looking at him. Staring at him, in fact. He can feel that itch that's growing all too familiar in Mickey's presence, like his skin is tingling, and he stubbornly avoids looking back at the brunet to check if he's right.

They're midway through the main course before Mickey speaks, and even then it's barely a sentence in reply to a question from Chip about his sister. Chip asks how she's doing, and Mickey says, "She's fine. Graduated, got a job."

"Excellent," Chip beams. "So many young people these days are so aimless, changing their plans all the time. It's so important for young people to have ambition in life, to have _goals_ to achieve."

Mickey's thoughtful for a moment. "Yeah," he says finally. "But you gotta be able to take a new path sometimes too." He looks across at Ian then, from under his eyelashes like he did at the barbecue, and Ian's not sure how to feel about that at all.

"Oh, of course," Chip says, and Ian has to stifle a laugh. "Yes, flexibility is essential too, if you can't achieve your original goals." The laugh dies in Ian's throat, and is replaced by a hard lump as he looks down at his plate.

Mickey seems suddenly defensive when he speaks again. "I'd say goals aren't reasonable if you can't achieve them," he says. "If someone aims for something out of their reach, then not achieving it's their own fault, right?"

Ian looks up sharply, the lump gone and replaced with a surge of anger. "Oh, and you're perfect then? Without fault?" Ian's tone is mocking, his eyebrows raised in challenge.

"No such thing," Mickey says, reaching for the potatoes. They're within Ian's reach, but he doesn't pass them, lets Mickey stand and stretch over the table for them instead. "But yeah, I work hard to avoid…weakness." It's an odd pause at the end, before that last word, and Ian wonders over it later, but right now he's riled up, eager to poke back.

"Right," he says. "Like, I dunno, vanity? Or pride?"

Mickey frowns. "Vanity's a fucking waste of time," he says. "But it's good to have pride in what you achieve. Not gonna apologise for it."

Ian snorts, stabbing at a potato probably far too aggressively. _Of course he wouldn't,_ he thinks.

Mickey spears a carrot with just as much intensity. "Look," he says, his eyes narrowed as he stares Ian down. "I've got enough issues, but I'm not fucking stupid. I know my faults." He glares at Ian, and Ian doesn't back down. He matches Mickey's glare with an intense one of his own, jutting his chin out. Mickey breaks first. "My temper gets the better of me," he says, flexing his fingers around his cutlery. Ian's not sure if it's supposed to be threatening, but he doesn't care if it is. Mickey's still talking, and Ian's still glaring. "It could be called resentful," Mickey continues, eyes not leaving Ian's face. "You fuck with me once, you won't get a chance to do it again."

Ian chuckles drily, his fork poised halfway to his mouth. "So instead, you just judge people on first impressions."

Something odd passes across Mickey's face that Ian doesn't quite understand, but then the other man shrugs, makes a show of taking a mouthful and chewing slowly before he answers. "You can tell a lot from how you first meet a person."

"Oh I agree." Ian's sawing through his meat now, swift movements that continue long after the cut's been made. "I mean, someone behaves badly the first time you meet them, they're probably not worth knowing." He looks up as he says it, tries to gauge Mickey's reaction and gets nothing.

Mickey's staring at Ian's knife when he answers. "Probably not."

There's an awkward throat clearing from the end of the table, and then a scrape as Chip pushes his chair back. "Well," he says, his voice loud and cheerful in a painfully obvious way. "I'll just get dessert, shall I?" There's a mumble of agreement from Fiona and Jimmy, so Chip grabs their empty plates and heads into the kitchen, looking back over his shoulder his shoulder at Ian and Mickey. There's a stony silence for the rest of the meal, and then Ian makes an excuse about the last bus, turning down Jimmy's offers of a lift home.

Ian's shaking when he gets outside, still shaking when he gets on the bus, and it's only when it drops him off three streets away from home that he feels the anger subside. He has no idea what's going on, but what he's sure of now is that Mickey Milkovich is the most arrogant asshole that he's ever met.


	4. Chapter 4

Frank hits the house like a hurricane on the following Friday morning. They've barely seen him in the past two weeks, save from the couple of times he was too drunk to move and ended up being dragged home by the police, but he rolls up at seven-thirty to wait for the mail—"it's disability day," Debbie reminds Ian—and then invites himself for breakfast when he smells the bacon that Fiona's frying.

The atmosphere round the table is tense, the way it always is when Frank is there, and there's an awkward silence until the letterbox clatters and Liam almost knocks his chair over in his haste to grab the post. He comes back with the mail and passes it to Fiona, who quickly dodges away from Frank's attempts to intercept the handover. She sorts through it, quickly and methodically, piling bills onto the breakfast bar, advertising into the centre of the table for Debbie to check for coupons and then doles out the personal mail. There's Frank's cheque, as expected, a couple for Lip—both rejections for jobs he's applied for, which he waves off with a "didn't want them anyway," although Ian thinks he looks more bothered than he shows—and a college prospectus for Carl, which Frank snorts derisively at.

"College," he says. "Waste of time. That's not where you'll be heading, son. Gallaghers don't need education, we got all we need up here already." He taps his head with his finger, and Fiona glares at him, taking in Carl's deflated expression.

"Don't say shit like that to him," she says, rubbing her hand instinctively over Carl's head in an attempt at comfort. He ducks away, arms folded stubbornly, and the atmosphere at the table grows even thicker.

"I'll say whatever I like to my own damn son, Fiona," Frank retorts, jabbing his fork at her between bites. "Time you kids learned some respect." Ian wonders if Frank even noticed him and Lip going to college, or that Debbie's about to go too. _Probably not,_ he thinks. Frank only notices things that affect himself.

The last piece of mail is a handwritten envelope addressed to Frank, and Fiona turns it over curiously before Frank snatches it out of her hand. He squints at it, and then rips it open, dropping the envelope onto the table as he pulls the sheets of paper from inside it. As Frank scans the letter, Ian picks up the envelope, curious despite himself. The paper is thick, obviously expensive, and the handwriting is neat and well-presented. He glances back up at his father, intrigued to find out the identity of the sender.

Frank's got a strange smile on his face as he comes to the end of the letter, and he looks up and eyes them all smugly. "Well," he says, folding the letter with more care than Ian's ever seen him show anything before. "Looks like your sister is coming to stay."

There's a stunned silence for a moment as Frank's words sink in, and Frank's smile grows just a little bit.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Fiona's voice is quiet and measured, but Ian can see from the pinched look on her face that she's not feeling either of those things. "What sister?"

"_Your_ sister," Frank says around a mouthful of bacon. "My _oldest_ daughter. Samantha." He looks up at Fiona, stares her down as if to say 'your move'. She opens her mouth to react, but Lip jumps in first.

"Well, she's not staying here," he says firmly. "We've got enough shit of our own to deal with."

Frank's face twists, and Ian knows what's coming. He jumps up, herds Debbie, Carl and Liam together and pushes them towards the stairs. "Time to get dressed," he says brightly, and then hisses at Debbie and Carl as they get out of Frank's earshot, "don't come down until you know he's gone." Debbie nods, grabbing Liam and heading upstairs with him, but Carl resists. "Seriously, bud," Ian says. "Stay upstairs." Carl frowns, and Ian tries another tack. "Look, just in case he goes up there, ok? You gotta make sure Debs and Liam are ok." Carl doesn't look convinced, glancing back at the table where Frank and Lip are about to come to blows, but then he nods his agreement and heads upstairs behind his siblings.

Ian breathes a sigh of relief, and then turns back to the table. Frank is standing up, chair knocked over behind him, and he's shouting at Lip as Fiona tries to come in between them.

"This is my fucking house," he's shouting, jabbing his finger at them. "I can do whatever I like in _my_ house."

"_Your_ house?" Fiona shouts back. "Who do you think _pays_ for this house, Frank? Because it's sure as shit isn't you."

"Excuse me?" Frank's enraged, and Ian moves round to Frank's other side. "Well, we can't all have rich boyfriends bankrolling us, Fiona, some of us have to work hard for what we have, some of us have to take what we can get in life—"

Lip cuts him off. "What? You're kidding, right? You're telling us about working for shit? When was the last time you worked a day in your life?"

"Oh that's right," Frank says. "Turn this all on me, because it's all my fault, right? How about you all take some responsibility for yourselves for a change? Why don't you try being me, huh? You got no idea—"

"Oh, _we've_ got no idea?" Lip's tone is scathing. "Yeah, we've got no idea what it's like to sit on our fucking _ass_ every day drinking ourselves to death because _we_"—he gestures between himself and his siblings—"have been taking care of your messes for fucking years."

Frank lunges at Lip, knocks Fiona down as she tries to stop him, and then collides with the table, plates crashing onto the floor. Ian grabs at him from behind as Lip throws a punch, and the three of them end up tangled together on the floor. Ian manages to twist and pin Frank's arms down and then Lip sits back, panting.

"Ungrateful little shits," Frank shouts, as Ian forces him down with a knee to his back. "Everything I've done for you and this is how you repay me? Everything—" His voice is muffled as he's pushed down, and Ian looks up, glances between Fiona and Lip. Fiona nods, looking suddenly tired, and Lip and Ian manhandle Frank out of the back door and down the steps. He's still hurling obscenities at them, rambling about how unfair they're being and that they won't get away with treating him like this and both brothers ignore him as they go back inside and close the door.

Fiona's already started picking up the plates on the floor when they get back to the kitchen, and Lip bends down to help while Ian heads upstairs to check on the others. He finds Carl sitting on the top step, baseball bat gripped tightly in his hands, his face emotionless. Ian glances past him, sees Debbie getting Liam organised, and sits himself down next to Carl.

"Frank's gone," he says, getting no reaction from his brother. "You ok?" Ian asks, concerned and Carl just shrugs, moving the bat from hand to hand.

"Is this about what he said?" Ian asks gently. "About college?" Carl doesn't respond, but his jaw clenches for the briefest second and Ian knows he's right. "Just ignore him," he says softly. "Frank doesn't know shit, you know that."

Carl makes a strange huffing sound, and Ian's not sure if he's upset or angry. "He's right," Carl says. "College is a dumb idea. Not like I'm gonna even get to go."

"Hey," Ian says, sharply. "Don't talk like that, ok? If you wanna go to college, you will." Carl makes that noise again and Ian suddenly feels so angry at Frank that he clenches his fists, fingers digging painfully into his palms.

"Fiona says you've been working really hard this year to pull your grades up?" he says instead, and it's true; Fiona had told him that on the phone before he came home, said that she'd never seen Carl apply himself to actual school work the way he had the past few months. "Sounds like your teachers were really pleased."

Something passes over Carl's face that could almost be pride, but it's gone as fast as it came and then he's frowning again. "Still flunking English," he says, staring down at his knees.

"But that's what your extra projects are for, right? If you make good grades on those you'll be fine." He leans over, drops his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "English is my best subject, bud. You're gonna ace those projects, ok?"

"I guess," Carl says, but he doesn't sound convinced. He looks somehow both younger and older than his age, Ian thinks, soft and vulnerable in a way that he rarely shows, yet also hardened already in a way that no kid should ever be.

"Look," Ian jokes awkwardly. "My brain's all fucked up and they let me in, right? Few bad grades are nothing compared to that." He nudges Carl's shoulder with his own, and his brother finally relaxes and grins a little.

"I hate him," Carl whispers, to no-one in particular, and Ian doesn't know what to do except to sling a loose arm around Carl's shoulders and pull him in tight. Carl tenses at the contact, pulls away slightly, but Ian just lets his arm hang there anyway, figuring it says more than words ever could.

* * *

Ian arrives at work that day with barely a minute to spare, having missed his usual train and having to get the bus instead. He sprints the last two blocks to get there, skidding into the restaurant at 9.59 to an amused look from Robbie.

"Where's the fire?" he riffs, and Ian grins, panting a little.

"Fuck off," he says good-naturedly. "Busy morning. Sorry," he adds, as an after-thought.

Robbie holds his hands up in mock-surrender. "Hey, doesn't bother me. I'm not your boss yet," he says, laughing as Ian gives his shoulder a shove on the way past.

It's a little after one, the lunchtime rush starting to abate a little, when Mickey arrives at Ian's register. Ian's started his welcome spiel before he looks up, and when he does and he sees who his customer is, the words dry in his mouth.

He suddenly feels ridiculously self-conscious, sweating in his cheap polyester uniform and stupid hat, when Mickey's standing in front of him, his hair gelled back and looking cool and collected in yet another probably-designer suit, and Ian can feel an embarrassed flush seeping into his cheeks.

If Mickey notices Ian's discomfort, he doesn't draw attention to the fact; he just nods a greeting and Ian swallows hard, paints on his best 'how can I help you?' smile and restarts his lines as if he's never seen Mickey before in his life. Mickey looks confused, frowning at him and chewing his lip a little, but he shakes it off and opens his mouth to order just as Robbie appears at Ian's elbow.

"Hey, Ian could you show me..." Robbie tails off, staring at Mickey like he's seen a ghost.

Mickey stares back, and the look on his face seems nothing short of hatred. They stand like that for much longer than is comfortable, Robbie looking startled and Mickey's face getting darker and darker, until Ian clears his throat pointedly. Mickey flinches, like he'd forgotten where he was or that anyone else was there, and then with a final glare at Robbie, he turns without a word and walks back out of the door.

Ian turns to Robbie, the question on his tongue, but Robbie's gone too, the office door swinging behind him.

* * *

They're outside later, sharing a cigarette, when Robbie brings it up.

"Look," Robbie says, shifting uncomfortably. "About earlier, I—I'm sorry, ok? Didn't mean to scare that guy off."

Ian glances across at him, taking a drag on the cigarette. "You know Mickey?"

Robbie looks surprised. "_You_ know him?"

Ian sighs, rolls his eyes a little. "He's a friend of my sister's boyfriend. Total asshole."

"I don't think you'll find a lot of people who share that opinion," Robbie says softly, lighting another cigarette, taking a drag before passing it over to Ian.

"Really? Cause no-one I know likes him. They all think he's rude and arrogant, he looks down on all of us." Ian looks across at him again, weighs his options. "How do you know him?"

Robbie's quiet for a moment, and Ian's ready to apologise, to take the question back, but then Robbie starts talking. "We...grew up together. Him and his sister, me and my brother. We were inseparable."

Ian frowns. "But earlier, the way you looked at each other?"

Robbie laughs, a dry sort of bark, and takes another drag before he continues. "Well, I'd say we're not inseparable any more. My family…our company got into some financial trouble a few years ago, when the recession hit. Our stocks fell overnight; we had job losses all over the country. It was a really...bad time." His voice is hoarse, emotional and Ian wants to say something but he's not sure what, really. Robbie just keeps talking, almost to himself, his voice rising as the story goes on. "I went to Mickey, asked him to help us out, any way that he could. He'd just turned 21, he had access to funds like you can't even imagine. It was just a loan; I would've paid him back! But he wouldn't, said it wasn't his problem. Called it 'bad management' and said I had to sort my own shit out."

"Fuck," Ian says, and it doesn't feel like enough but he can't think of the words to describe his horror at what Robbie's telling him.

"Yeah," Robbie says, tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette. "So anyway, the company went bust, of course. Left us on our fucking knees. And so now, instead of running the family business with my dad and my brother like I should be, I'm on the breadline, taking whatever job I can." He waves up at the restaurant behind him with his cigarette, and then looks at Ian. "Shit, no offence. I mean, you're not gonna be here forever, right? You're gonna be a physio or whatever." He drops his cigarette, grinds it out with the toe of his shoe. "Anyway," he says. "It is what it is. Just…didn't expect to see him, that's all."

"Yeah, well I doubt he'll be back," Ian says. "Don't worry about that."

"Oh, I'm not," Robbie says, his trademark cheeky grin back in place. "He's the one who should be trying to avoid me. I've got nothing to be ashamed of."

"Good," Ian says. "I'd hate it if…" he pauses, searching for the right words. "I don't want you to feel like you can't hang around," he says finally, and Robbie laughs.

"Nah," he says. "I think you're stuck with me for a while yet. C'mon, let's get back inside."

* * *

Fiona's sceptical when Ian tells her Robbie's story later.

"I dunno," she says. "I mean, I know you hate the guy, and he's not high on my Christmas card list either, but I never took him as someone so...malicious. I don't think Jimmy would be such close friends with someone who'd behave like that."

Ian's on the crapped out laptop, googling. "It says it right here," he says. "Worldwide Cup, went into receivership in 2009, went totally bust in 2010. That's exactly how Robbie said it happened." He slaps the laptop shut. "And Mickey could've stopped it, could've helped. And he didn't."

"Well," Fiona says thoughtfully. "I can't believe I'm defending the guy, but maybe it was too far gone? Companies go bust all the time Ian, and sometimes they just can't be saved."

"What, so people just shouldn't even try?"

"I'm not saying that," she says, gently. "Just that...you've only got one side of the story, ok? Keep an open mind, that's all I'm saying."

"Well," Ian says hotly. "I'm not gonna trust Mickey Milkovich over Robbie. And if it's not true, well then let's hear Mickey defend himself."

Fiona sighs, moves around the counter to squeeze at his shoulder. "Look," she says, her voice a little hesitant. "You and this Robbie guy, is there something—"

"No," Ian cuts her off defensively, and she gives him her best mom-look. "_No,_" he repeats. "He's just a friend, _my_ friend, and I believe him, ok?"

"Ok," she says. "Ok."

* * *

Sammi Gallagher arrives a little after two on Monday afternoon, dragging a large suitcase and a sullen looking child along with her. She introduces him as her son, Chuckie, as they make their way into the house where Debbie's got brownies waiting for them. It's awkward as anything to begin with, without even Frank there to act as a buffer between them, but Sammi's loud and lively and she soon manages to draw them into reluctant conversation.

"I work in Washington," she tells them when Lip asks. "For a senator, Sheila Jackson. I don't know if you've heard of her? I'm sure you have. She's such…just such a wonderful person, y'know? _Inspirational_."

"Oh, I'm sure." Fiona's tone is dry, but Sammi doesn't seem to notice, beaming at her.

"Oh, Fiona I'm sure you'd love her. She changed my life when she gave me that job. I keep telling her, Senator Jackson you're an inspiration to women like me. Just shows where you can get to if you work hard enough."

Fiona rolls her eyes at Ian over Sammi's head, but their new sister is on a roll now, barely pausing for breath as she regales them with tales of her boss' policies and advice the senator has given her and how it means she can provide a good quality of life for Chuckie and how she's so thrilled for the opportunity that she works overtime for free and before they know it over an hour has passed and she's still going.

"So," Lip says, jumping in as soon as there's a break in Sammi's chatter. "How well do you know Frank?"

"Daddy?" Sammi says, looking confused, and Lip nods. "Well, not too well. I met him a few times maybe ten years ago? But then I met this guy, and I moved out of state and had Chuckie, and then I got work out there and I just never came back, y'know?"

Lip grabs the thread she's offering, and pulls. "But, you came back now?" he probes.

"Well, yeah," she says. "Just felt like time, and I wanted Chuckie to meet his grandpa, and I've got some other people to see."

"Well," Lip says, his voice falsely bright. "We don't want to keep you then. I can bet where Frank'll be right now."

Fiona grabs him as they're pulling their shoes on, whispering in his ear. "What are you up to?"

"Getting her the fuck out of here before she bores us all to death," he shoots back. "One look at Frank passed out over the bar of the Alibi and she'll be back to D.C. before you can blink."

Frank's exactly where Lip expects him to be, although he's probably a lot more sober than either he or Fiona would have expected for four in the afternoon. Sammi lights up when she sees him, bounding across the room with a shriek and grabbing onto him.

"It's so good to see you, Daddy," Sammi says, and she hugs him harder than Fiona thinks she or her siblings ever have. Her surprise is only increased when Frank returns the gesture, pulling Sammi to the side of him at the bar and leaving Fiona and Lip standing there, staring blankly at them.

"Guess we know who his favourite is then," Lip quips, but it falls flat, the confusion evident on his face.

"Fuck him," Fiona says, turning to leave. "They deserve each other." She tries not to let on that she's feeling just as confused as Lip is, a strange kind of hurt that she doesn't understand. It's not as if she's cared what Frank thought of her for a long time, in fact she'd probably take any approval he gave her as an insult, but seeing him huddled next to this strange, new daughter at the bar is making her feel bizarrely jealous and she doesn't want to see any more of it.

* * *

"They seem nice, my brothers and sisters," Sammi says, when they're midway through their second drink. "You're very lucky to have such great kids, Dad."

Frank snorts, downing the rest of his beer and gesturing to Kev for another. "Lucky? Oh yeah, so lucky to have such unappreciative little rats for children, so lucky that they despise me and kick me down at every turn. Threw me out of my own house last week, and not for the first time either. No idea what makes them think they can behave like that, that's not how _I _raised them, their fucking mother…" He rambles on, watching Sammi's reaction out of the corner of his eye. She looks suitably horrified, and a plan starts forming in the back of his mind.

"That's awful," she says. "I don't know why they'd do that to you."

"I just want to be a proper father to the little ones," he says sadly. "But Fiona, she won't let me anywhere near them. It's such a shame, I miss them so much." He chances another look at Sammi, wanting to be sure that he picks just the right time to drop the bait. "She thinks she's better than me. Not like you, Sammi. You understand me, the way a _real_ daughter does." She preens under his words, smiling widely, and he knows he's got her right where he wants her. "It's a fucking conspiracy, that's what it is. If only those older kids would move out," he says. "I'd get my fucking house back; get my _kids_ back from Fiona."

Sammi looks thoughtful. "Well, you know," she says. "I've been thinking of getting an assistant. Senator Jackson, my boss y'know? She keeps telling me that I'm working too hard, that I should be spending more time with Chuckie. I could always…" She pauses, squints at him as if to gauge his reaction. "I could maybe give one of them the job? Fiona seems like she works hard. That would help, right?"

"No," Frank answers almost too quickly, choking on his beer. "I mean, that's such a kind thing to do, helping your sister out like that." She beams again, and he continues. "But she'd never leave the kids, and she's got some rich fucking asshole on her arm right now. That's no good. But," he says, and he makes a show of looking thoughtful. "Lip or Ian, they'd certainly be good options. Lip's smart, went to some fancy college; and Ian, he's got discipline. Works hard. Used to be in the army. I'm sure they'd be so glad of the help."

She smiles at him, wraps her arm round his shoulder and squeezes. "Consider it done."


	5. Chapter 5

It turns out that Lip's prediction couldn't have been any further off the mark. Sammi's reunion with Frank doesn't have her on the first flight back to D.C.; in fact, she seems even more eager to get to know her new siblings and wastes no time in settling herself and Chuckie into the Gallagher house.

By Thursday, Ian's convinced that something fishy is going on. She's barely left him alone for two days, hanging off his every word and practically tailing him all over the house, and on Wednesday she'd _coincidentally_ turned up at his work. She'd spun a story about visiting friends and needing to feed Chuckie, but it was a step too far for Ian who's entirely weirded out by the whole thing. If Sammi wasn't family—and at least ten years his senior—he might have taken it for an over-enthusiastic crush, which is something he's had experience of with several different girls over the years, but with that off the table he's pretty clueless as to what's going on.

The final straw is when, just as he's leaving work on Friday, she turns up again, minus Chuckie this time, and says that she was in the area and does he feel like keeping her company on the train home. He answers honestly, says he's going for a drink with Robbie, but somehow she takes it as an invitation and before he knows it, he's huddled around a tiny bar table with his friend and his new sister. It's not really how he envisaged spending the evening.

She barely shuts up for the first forty-five minutes, chatters away to Robbie about her boss and her job and how much she loves D.C.—all things which Ian has heard already five times over—and then she turns her attention to Ian and it's nothing short of embarrassing. She fawns over him, her hand on his arm, as she sings his praises with information she can only have gotten from Frank, and he squirms in his seat.

She excuses herself after their second drink—"need to pop to the little girl's room," she says, with a girlish laugh that makes Ian's skin crawl—and Ian breathes an audible sigh of relief at the respite.

Robbie chuckles. "Fuck," he says. "I thought my family was intense. Your sister's something else, dude."

"She's not my sister," Ian says stubbornly. "Not really."

"Well, anyway," Robbie says. "You know that this Jackson woman, the senator? You know she's Milkovich's aunt?"

Ian almost chokes on his last mouthful of beer. "Really?!"

"Yeah," Robbie confirms. "By marriage I think, on one side or the other. But she took a special interest in Mickey and his sister, they're all very close. I think maybe she's harbouring hopes that Mickey and her daughter, y'know…" He winks, making a lewd gesture, and Ian bursts out laughing. _Yeah,_ he thinks. _Don't think _that's _gonna happen._ He's not sure why he finds it so funny.

* * *

Jimmy throws a party at his house on Saturday night and Fiona heads over there first thing to help him get ready. It's mainly people he knows from his time growing up in Chicago, but he's made sure to invite all the Gallaghers, Sammi included, along with Kev and Vee and several Alibi regulars, who turn up on the proviso that they never turn down a free drink. Frank was expressly _not_ invited, at Fiona's request, but he turns up with Tommy and Kermit anyway and Fiona's too desperate to avoid a scene to turn him away at that point. He sneers at her, before heading off to get stuck into Jimmy's drinks cabinet.

Ian hadn't really wanted to come, having invited Robbie and being, unsurprisingly, turned down on the basis of Mickey's inevitable presence, he feels a little lost. Lip's here, but there's some girl—Amy? Angela? Something with an A—hanging off his arm and so Ian's had barely a chance to talk to him, and Fiona is playing hostess with Jimmy and his brother. It suits her well, he notes; she's smiling widely as Jimmy introduces her to various friends and colleagues, and making appropriate small talk and everyone looks thoroughly enamoured with her. Ian's pleased, because this party has been a subject of much anxiety on her part all week, Fiona being convinced that she could never fit in amongst Jimmy's peers. It's nice to see her blend in so seamlessly, he just wishes he could do the same.

Instead, he's once again been cornered by Sammi who is singing the praises of Jimmy's house and Jimmy himself and comparing it to places in Washington and Ian's fast reaching the point where he'd probably find drinking bleach preferable to having to hear any more of it.

He eventually manages to escape her when she offers to go and get them more drinks, and as soon as she's out of sight he ducks out of the room, heading down the hallway to find somewhere quiet where he can hide until she finds someone else latch on to.

He's trying to remember the layout of the house from the last time he was here, skipping the door that he knows leads to the kitchen, and then he finds himself in what seems to be a games room. Mickey's in there, playing pool and seemingly alone. Ian freezes in the doorway, his mouth suddenly dry and his mind somehow not getting the message to his legs to leave, and Mickey looks up at him from where he's bent over the table. He straightens almost immediately, clears his throat and pulls at his clothes where they've rumpled a little. He's dressed for the party, his shirt a deep shade of purple that somehow brings out the colour in his eyes, and Ian wonders why he's in here instead of being at the party with everyone else.

"You, um, you want a game?" Mickey asks, gesturing at the table.

Ian's caught so off guard that his mind goes entirely blank, his mouth moving wordlessly as he tries to find an excuse to say no, and then he's saying, "Yeah, alright," and mentally kicking himself because that isn't what he wanted to say at all.

"Cool," Mickey says, collecting the balls together and setting them back up without a word, placing them methodically into the triangle and shaking it out with his eyes fixed on the table. "You wanna go first?" he asks, holding the cue ball out to Ian.

Ian reaches for the ball, fingers brushing briefly over Mickey's, and then he turns to grab a cue from the rack and take a minute to breathe. His heart is pounding and he feels some strange mixture of nerves, because he always seems to feel like that around Mickey, and anger, because he can hear Robbie's voice in his head talking about how Mickey refused to help his family. He's still wishing he'd just said no when he wanted to.

He turns back to the table, sets the ball down and lines up his break shot, feeling Mickey's eyes on him the whole time. He breaks ok, pocketing one ball of each suit, and then lining up another shot while the silence between him and Mickey grows increasingly awkward. He misses his shot, fuck knows how because it should have been an easy pot, and then steps back to let Mickey have his turn.

Mickey pots his first ball with what looks like zero effort, and then takes a minute to choose his next shot, pacing around the table a few times before selecting a ball. He's lining up the shot when the silence finally becomes too much for Ian.

"I guess we should at least try and talk a little, right?" he says, his voice full of false cheer. Mickey looks up at him from where he's lining up his cue, frowns, and then takes the shot, his ball falling short of the pocket he was aiming for. Ian steps up the table, and presses on. "I could say something about tomorrow's game," he says, as he chooses which ball to go for. "You could answer with something about the chances of the Sox winning next week." He lines up his shot, pockets the ball but takes one of Mickey's along with it and then the cue ball follows after. He curses under his breath.

"What, you can't play pool without having a fucking conversation?" Mickey's scornful as he moves past Ian to take his turn.

"Sometimes it's best to," Ian says, narrowing his eyes a little as he watches Mickey repeat his performance to choose his ball.

Mickey huffs, and then takes the shot and misses. "What, for you or for me?"

Ian shrugs as he steps up to the table. "Both, I guess. Given that we're both hiding from the party in here." He grins up at Mickey, and then takes his shot without re-checking his angle. He pockets the ball, out of sheer luck rather than anything else, but he feels justified in feeling a little smug as he picks out his next target.

"You, anti-social? I'd never have guessed," Mickey mutters, a scowl etched onto his face as Ian hits his next ball, and misses this time. Mickey takes his place at the table, leaning over to reach the cue ball where it's positioned awkwardly. He ends up almost on his tiptoes on one foot, and Ian has to look away. He's surprised when Mickey speaks again. "You, um. You come up to the North Side a lot?" he asks, before he takes the shot and pockets his ball, moving around the table to pick another one, pocketing that one with ease.

It's awkward small-talk, and Ian knows it, but he plays along. "Few days a week," he shrugs. "People always want fast-food, right? It's easy money." Mickey's face clouds over at the reminder of their chance meeting at Ian's register the previous week, and Ian seizes the opportunity to needle at him on Robbie's behalf. "When you came in the other day, I was just training one of our new management recruits."

Mickey's scowl deepens. "Robbie's got that way of making new friends easily," he says, his voice hard. "Doesn't mean he can keep them." He hits the cue ball with way too much power and it bounces up and off the table. Ian retrieves it, placing it back on the table to take his turn.

"Seems like he was unlucky to lose _your_ friendship," Ian says and then pauses to take his shot, partly for effect and partly to ensure that his choice of words makes it clear that he knows Mickey's secret. He pockets his ball, and then meets Mickey's eyes. "I mean, that's something that's gonna affect him his whole life," he says, and Mickey's eyes darken just a little. He opens his mouth to reply, but he's cut off before he can start by Kev bursting through the door.

"Oh," he says, and he's clearly well on his way to being drunk. "I was looking for Vee…and the bathroom…Vee _in_ the bathroom, if you catch my drift." He winks, wobbling a little. "_Great_ party, man," he says to Mickey. "Not sure why you two are holed up in here…oh, unless?" It's like a light coming on, and he grins widely. "That'd be a turn up, right? Fi with your guy Jimmy, and then you two? That'd be something." He's turning as he finishes his ramble, and he staggers off, presumably still searching for the bathroom and Veronica, and the thrill Ian had been feeling at needling Mickey is replaced with a weird kind of second-hand embarrassment for Kev.

Mickey stares after him, the anger gone from his face but replaced with something else that Ian finds somehow more disconcerting. It's like Ian can almost see the cogs turning in Mickey's brain and although he's not certain of the subject matter, Ian's pretty sure he can take a fairly accurate guess.

He focuses back on the table, picking out a ball. "You said yourself that you don't forgive easily, right?" He takes the shot and then looks up, his ball bouncing off the cushion and knocking one of Mickey's into the pocket instead. "I'd kinda hope you'd be careful when starting arguments with your friends."

"Yeah, I guess." Mickey's not taking his shot; he's just looking at Ian like he's trying to figure him out.

It makes Ian feel ridiculously uncomfortable, as if Mickey _could_ see right through him if he looked hard enough, and he hates it. He pulls himself up a little taller, taking advantage of the inches he has on Mickey, and probes further, trying to get the advantage back. "So you'd never be, I don't know. Petty, or mean?"

Mickey doesn't answer, turning his attention back to the table and pocketing his last coloured ball. He takes a shot on the black, misses and then looks up at Ian, his eyebrows pulled together in confusion. "What game are you playing here, man?"

"No game," Ian says, trying to pocket his own ball and failing. "Just trying to figure you out."

Mickey snorts. "Yeah, and how's that working out for you?"

"Terribly," Ian says, honestly. "There's so many different stories that I don't know which to believe."

Mickey takes another shot, pockets the black with ease this time, and turns to shake Ian's hand. His grip is firm, strong, and he doesn't let go immediately. Instead, he looks up at Ian, making eye contact, his gaze unwavering.

"Look," Mickey says. "Don't waste time trying to figure me out, ok? It won't end well for either of us."

Ian shrugs, pulling his hand away as he turns to head back to the main room so he can try to find Lip. "If I don't try now, I might never know, right?" he says. He grins over his shoulder at Mickey, and then leaves without another word.

* * *

He doesn't find Lip, and thankfully Sammi is nowhere to be seen either, so he hangs on the outskirts of the room, drinking soda because he's gone well over his usual alcohol limit. He runs the conversation with Mickey over and over in his mind, twists it until it fits with Robbie's story. Mickey's dismissal of Robbie seems to Ian to just be more proof of his guilt, that Robbie's story had indeed been true. He's surprised though, that Mickey was so open in his disregard for Ian's friend. He'd expected him to cover up better than that.

He's watching the room when Fiona finds him, her hair dishevelled in such away that he's pretty sure he can guess the reason for her and Jimmy's absence for the last half an hour. She's not drunk, but tipsy enough to sling an arm awkwardly around his taller shoulder as she leans in to talk to him.

"Where've you been hiding?" she asks.

"Not hiding," he says, which he supposes isn't quite true but he's not going to get into the Sammi issue now. "I was playing pool, with Mickey."

She looks up at him, surprised. "Really? Thought you two were like sworn enemies or something."

He glares at her. "I'm not five; I can be polite when I need to. Anyway," he says. "I wanted to see what he had to say about Robbie."

"And?"

"I believe Robbie even more now," Ian says decisively, but Fiona looks unconvinced.

"Look," she says. "I asked Jimmy about it earlier." Ian opens his mouth to protest, and she shushes him. "I was casual about it, ok? Just asked if he knew Robbie. And he said that he didn't know the specifics, but he's pretty sure Robbie's not a trustworthy guy."

A surge of rage goes through Ian, and he pulls away from Fiona. "Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? He's heard Mickey's side of the story." Fiona looks startled at his vehemence, and he takes a breath to calm down. "I'm sure he means well," he says. "Of course he believes his friend. But I believe _my_ friend, Fi. He's not lying."

She sighs. "Just…promise me you'll be careful, ok? The last thing you need is to be dragged into someone else's shit."

He rolls his eyes. "I'm sure I'll be fine," he says, and he's the one that pulls her in for a hug this time. She holds on longer than is necessary, like the way she hugged him when he was a kid, or last year on the first day he managed to get out of bed after his crash, and he wonders what's going through her mind.

When she pulls away and heads back off towards Jimmy, Ian spots Debbie coming back in the room, hanging off the arm of one of Jimmy's friends. She looks more dishevelled than Fiona does; long strands of hair falling out of the weird twisty thing it had been fastened into, her lipstick smeared and the strap of her dress hanging over her shoulder. He frowns over at her, and then she meets his eyes, beaming at him and waving. She seems fine, Ian thinks, but he still doesn't like it.

He goes in search of Carl next, finding him well past drunk in the kitchen. He tries to get his brother to drink some water, but Carl refuses, waving the bottle of beer he's holding at Ian as if to prove that he's already got a drink and doesn't need another. One of Jimmy's friends comes in to raid the fridge, staring down at the brothers where they're sitting on the floor as if they're some kind of zoo exhibit, and Ian feels that feeling of embarrassment from earlier returning. He can't imagine what all these rich, privileged people must think of his family, he thinks that they must seem so loud and brash compared to the lifestyle of Jimmy and his friends.

He hands Carl over to Lip, who's finally resurfaced from wherever it was he'd got to—"Hey, what d'you think of Amanda?" he stops to ask Ian, and Ian just shrugs because he's not even exchanged two words with her and he's sure she'll be replaced with someone else by next week anyway—and then he goes to use the bathroom. The one downstairs is engaged, so he heads upstairs only to find Frank rifling through the bathroom cabinets.

"Son!" his father crows. "Come help me out, this is the last one." When Ian steps into the bathroom, he's horrified to find that Frank's got a pillowcase full of items that he's presumably liberated from various rooms—jewellery, some ornaments, a couple of bundles of cash.

"What are you _doing_?" he hisses, pulling Frank out into the hallway.

"Just…just taking what I'm due," Frank mumbles, a pill bottle still in his hand. "Why should Fiona get all the luck, when I'm the one who set it all up, I'm the one who got her that job…"

Ian chances a glance down the hallway, and then shoves Frank into Jimmy's bedroom. "Fiona got _herself_ that job," he says, trying to keep his voice down. "She worked hard to get it. And even if she didn't, you can't just go robbing her boyfriend's house."

"Not stealing," Frank says, stubbornly. "Just taking what I need, that's all."

"Put it back, Frank," Ian says. "All of it."

"And why should I?" Frank's voice is getting louder, and Ian feels dread start to pool in his stomach. He can't risk anyone over-hearing, needs to put everything to rights before Frank's misdemeanour can be discovered. "I don't have to listen to you," Frank carries on, his voice getting continuously louder. "Damn fucking kids. And you, you're not even mine, don't know why I even let you stay, you can fuck off just like Fiona and that asshole downstairs—"

"_Frank_," Ian hisses, desperately, as he hears footsteps outside, but it's too late, the door bursts open and Jimmy, Fiona and Mickey are in the doorway, staring at them, taking in the sight of Ian trying to restrain his father's flailing arms and the pillowcase of stolen goods on the floor. Ian sags back against the wall, barely able to look at them. Jimmy looks shocked more than anything, and Fiona's cheeks are red enough to rival Ian's hair, but Mickey is the one that bothers Ian the most. His face is hard, his jaw tight, and he's looking down at Frank with obvious disgust, like their father might be infectious. Ian sometimes thinks that maybe he is, and right now more than ever, because then Mickey is looking at him, and at Fiona, and that same look is on his face.

Before Ian can even pause to take stock, they're leaving in a huge rush of apologies under the gaze of Jimmy's guests; Frank shouting the odds at everyone, Carl retrieved from where he was vomiting into a houseplant, Debbie pulled away from whatever-his-name-was, and then they're piling into a cab and Mickey is watching them leave from the doorway of Jimmy's house.

That look is still on his face.


	6. Chapter 6

Ian spends the whole journey back to their house in silence. He's not sure how he ended up in the cab with Fiona, Frank and Sammi while Lip and his girlfriend got the relative ease of just Carl and Debbie for company in the car behind, but he's really wishing he'd been paying better attention to the seating arrangements as they left the house. Fiona and Frank are having a full blown argument from either side of him, talking across him as if he isn't even there; it's getting more and more heated, and Sammi keeps twisting round from the front row of the van to add her two cents in as well, defending their father more veraciously than even Frank's capable of. Ian finds it bizarrely unsettling, Sammi's unflinching loyalty to the father who by all accounts didn't give a shit about her for most of her life.

Fiona huffs out a noise of defeat beside him; the inevitable result when arguing with Frank. Frank always has an answer, a retort, an anecdote that proves how right he is, and it's pointless really ever trying to win. She twists in her seat slightly so that she's got her back to Ian and Frank, and starts aggressively tapping the keys on her cell phone; she's texting Jimmy, Ian presumes, trying to make amends. He wonders how likely that is, realistically.

It comes back to him in flashes, the party and trying to get away from Sammi and the pool game with Mickey; and then Frank with his bag of loot and his loud voice and then everyone crowding around them and just looking at them, at _him_, as if they were dirty, disgusting, nothing and it brings back too many things that he's fought to forget. His stomach churns and he swallows back the urge to vomit, trying to breathe instead and wondering, when it comes out high-pitched and shaky and loud, if everyone else can hear how much he's freaking out. He curls in on himself, bent over so that his forehead touches his knees, his heart pounding and his mind racing, trying to process everything that just happened. There's adrenaline coursing through him, a strange combination of shame and rage, and he's barely holding it together, can feel the cracks forming in the mask he's put up.

When they get home, Fiona refuses to let Frank into the house, literally bars the way in with Lip and Ian flanking her on either side as Debbie and Carl watch from the living room window. Ian's gripping the rail on the porch so tight that his knuckles have turned white, so tight that the only thing he can feel is the wood digging into his palm and he wonders if that's the one thing anchoring him down. There's rage bubbling in his stomach, and he's biting his tongue to get from letting it spill out. He's not sure that he'd be able to stop once he'd started.

He spends the rest of the night pacing the floor, and as soon as it hits five o'clock he goes for a run. He runs eight miles and doesn't feel any better.

* * *

Sammi's in the kitchen when he gets back; he supposes that he shouldn't really be surprised, given that Chuckie had spent the previous night there, but he'd been hoping he'd have a bit of a reprieve from her attentions for a day or so. No such luck.

He's still on edge despite the run, just wants to get in the shower and then hide in his room and maybe work out some more in the hopes that it might shut his brain up, but she springs up from her seat at the table as soon as he comes in the room, and then she won't let him get a word in.

She's pouring coffee as she chatters, shoving a mug unceremoniously into his hand. He takes it, not quite annoyed enough to turn down hot coffee, but he's edging towards the stairs nonetheless. The back of his heel hits the bottom step when her prattle is suddenly turned directly onto him, and he freezes.

"Ian," she says. "I don't know if I mentioned, about my job?" Ian almost chokes on his coffee, although Sammi doesn't seem to notice. She just carries on her stream of conversation. "Well, my boss, Senator Jackson, thinks that I need to get an assistant. _'Sammi,'_ she said to me. _'Sammi, you work yourself far too hard. That boy of yours is growing up right before your eyes, and you're missing all of it.'_ And she's right," Sammi says. "Some weeks I barely even see Chuckie, y'know? Poor kid's so sensitive, he needs me around."

Ian doesn't tell her that he'd caught Chuckie watching Carl's porn earlier that week, or that when he'd taken all the kids to the arcade Chuckie had responded to a kid trying to take Liam's quarters by bashing the bully's head into a wall. Sensitive is _not_ the word that Ian would have chosen.

"…and so I really have been thinking about it, and being here this week and meeting all you guys, I suddenly thought, hey! Why not kill two birds with one stone, y'know?" She beams at him, big and wide, and although it seems genuine Ian can't help but think this whole conversation is going to come with a catch. "I mean, I've seen how much you're all struggling," she's saying now. "You're all working all these jobs, and not really getting anywhere, and anything I can do to help with that, I should really. We're family, right?" She beams again, and Ian's throat is so tight he can't speak. He nods, although he's not sure Sammi really needed the validation to keep going. He's trying to focus on her words, trying to get a grip on the way he feels so suddenly offended and _defensive_, because she's still talking in this nice-as-pie voice but he can somehow feel the veiled insult underneath it all anyway. He leans against the wall, his free hand balled into a fist and the grip on his coffee cup becoming dangerously tight.

"So this job," she says. "It's pretty basic, but y'know, the pay isn't that bad and it's got good benefits. Healthcare, dental, whole nine yards. What d'you say?"

Ian blinks at her. "What?" he says dumbly, feeling like he's missed something huge.

"The job," she says. "I'm giving you the job."

He stares at her blankly. "I didn't apply for any job."

"Oh I know, silly," she says, swatting playfully at him. "But I thought it'd be nice to keep it in the family, and I know you'll work hard."

It's starting to get clearer in his head, and his voice is firm when he answers this time. "I don't want it."

"You don't need to play it cool," she says. "And don't worry that you won't be able to manage it. I know you're a great kid, you'll do a great job."

He curls his fist even tighter, feels his jaw set stubbornly. "No," Ian says, as firmly as he can manage without losing his temper. "I _really_ don't want it."

She frowns at him, eyebrows pulled together in obvious confusion. "It's a good job offer, Ian. Probably the best you're gonna get. I mean, Daddy's told me about all the problems you've had and—"

He cuts her off, slamming his mug down on the counter. "_No_," he says, and suddenly his voice is loud, so loud that it sounds alien even to him. She flinches, and he stops, takes a minute to breathe, and then looks her directly in the eye. "I don't _want_ the job," he says, enunciating each word slowly. "I don't want to work in politics; I don't want to move away. I want to stay _here_ and go to college and do exactly what I have planned."

He leaves his coffee half-drunk, and heads to the bathroom before she can try again.

* * *

Frank doesn't take Ian's refusal well at all.

He's at their house when Ian gets home on Monday—he lifeguards at the community pool twice a week, and he's aching all over and his shoulders are burnt, so a confrontation with Frank is not what he had in mind for his afternoon—and Sammi's hovering behind him, like a fucking moth gravitating towards a flame. She looks nervous, her eyes flicking between Ian and Frank, and suddenly a few more pieces start to slot into place. _Of course._

"Son," Frank says, arms outstretched, and Ian is immediately on his guard. Frank's voice is light, jovial almost, and Ian's lived with him long enough to know that it's a warning sign. "Hard at work, I see," Frank continues, punching him on the shoulder. Ian forces himself not to flinch, pulls himself up, back straight and shoulders back, just like he remembers. "Always working hard, that's us Gallaghers," Frank says, turning to Sammi as he does. "And I hear that Sammi here has given you a _great_ opportunity, to work for her in Washington." He looks back at Ian, narrows his eyes at him, and Ian avoids his gaze, focuses on the ceiling. His back is so tight that he feels like if he straightens it any further it might snap, and there's a part of him that wants to test that, see if it really will. He pulls up, just a little bit straighter, and a muscle flexes in his jaw.

"And I know that _my son_ Ian would take any opportunity given to him," Frank continues, and the joviality is gone, replaced with a mean edge, one that Ian had been expecting all along. "Because we _Gallaghers_ aren't prone to looking gift horses in the mouth. Isn't that right, _son?_" He say the last word with a sneer, with a sudden look that's so unexpectedly hate-filled that it has Ian losing his rigid stance and taking a step backwards, and then another, and then one more and his back's against the wall.

He tries to escape upstairs but Frank's onto him, crowding him against the wall until he can't escape, until he feels trapped, and all he can see, hear, breathe is Frank, yelling about how useless he is and why can't he think about everyone else for a change and hasn't everyone done enough taking care of him.

Fiona's voice filters through, yelling at Frank and asking what the fuck he's playing at, and Frank's attention is pulled away from Ian long enough for Ian to regain some focus, so stand a little straighter and remember the defiance he'd felt before his father unleashed yet another verbal assault on him. He regains his posture, pulls his back tighter and straighter until it's even more taut than before, his eyes focused on a greasy mark on the wall.

He can hear Fiona and Frank yelling at each other, _again_, always yelling, too much yelling, but he can't make out the words, is too busy looking at that spot on the wall. Eight-year-old Ian wants to make it into a dinosaur, wants to think that the misshapen blob can be something halfway magical, but adult Ian just sees it as one more thing that makes him, his family, somehow lesser, lower, bottom of the pile. He's pretty sure Jimmy Lishman doesn't have any greasy spots on his wall, and he's willing to bit that Mickey Milkovich, wherever he lives, doesn't either.

He's suddenly aware that Fiona's talking at him, _to _him, and he blinks several times in quick succession and then focuses on her voice. "Sammi offered you a job?" She sounds surprised, like that wasn't what she expected any more than Ian had, and there's a panic deep in his gut that maybe she might agree with Frank, that maybe she might think it's best that he take it, maybe she might think his own plan is unachievable and that this job is his best shot. He watches, watches her face as her eyebrows pull together and she puts all the pieces in place.

"And Frank thinks you should take the job?" Ian nods, not trusting himself to speak. "But you don't want to?" Ian shakes his head. "And you told Sammi that?" Ian nods again.

"Well," Fiona says, and Ian's stomach churns violently. "I guess that leaves it up to you, Ian. Frank," she says, gesturing at their father, "Is never going to speak to you again if you don't take the job." She pauses, and she looks at Ian. Her eyes are sparkling a little, and he feels suddenly relieved, like maybe some of the tension slips from his spine, like maybe his stomach stops churning just a little bit. She grins at him, and then she continues what she'd been going to say. "And _I'll_ never speak to you again if you do."

* * *

As far as Ian's concerned, that's the matter over and done with, so he's quite frankly _astonished_ when, on Tuesday evening, Carl lets slip after a couple of beers that Sammi had offered Lip the exact same job that she'd offered Ian and that Lip had accepted the offer.

"Are you _sure_?" he says, because he's sure Carl must have it wrong, must have misunderstood somehow, but Carl just takes a swig of his beer like it's no big deal and nods.

"Yeah," he says. "Debbie was listening the whole time. She said he practically bit her hand off."

Ian's not sure why it bothers him so much—he doesn't want the stupid job, never did, so why does it matter if Lip or anyone else takes it instead? But it does bother him, eats away at him all night, until he's spent another night without sleep, clock-watching until he can allow himself to declare it morning and go for a run.

It still doesn't help.

* * *

He finds Lip under the L tracks, late on Wednesday afternoon. His brother's kicking at rocks with a cigarette in his hand, and for a moment it's like they're teenagers again, like the last five years never happened. Ian allows himself a moment to believe in it, before he steps into Lip's eye line.

Lip won't meet his eyes.

They stand in silence for almost five minutes until Ian gives in. "You could have told me."

Lip sighs, grinds out his cigarette with his heel. He reaches for another almost immediately, offers the packet to Ian before taking one for himself and lighting it. "I would have," he says. "Didn't expect Carl to get in there first."

Ian takes a drag on his cigarette and laughs, a weird half-genuine, half-fake laugh that echoes a little in his chest. "Always check the stairs, bud."

"Ain't that the truth," Lip says lightly, leaning against one of the stone pillars and then sliding down it until he's sitting on the ground. "I would have, though," he says again. "I would."

"Why'd you agree to take it?" Ian's voice comes out smaller than he means it to, and he clears his throat so that his next words come out stronger. "You know Frank's behind this, he has to be."

Lip's voice is flat. "I don't care."

Ian stares at him in astonishment. "But—"

"No, Ian I mean it," Lip says, looking up at him. "I _don't_ care. I don't care if Frank's behind it; I don't care if you think I'm making a huge mistake. It's done, I took the job."

Ian scuff his feet against the ground. He's wondering again, why he's so bothered by this, why he really doesn't want Lip to take this job, why he doesn't want Sammi and her strange allegiance with Frank anywhere near his brother. "You have fucking engineering degree, and you're gonna go and work in some fucking office?" It comes out harsher than he expected, but somehow he can't rein it in. He's remembering how Sammi sold the job to him, remembering how she'd told him that he'd never get a better offer, and he's wondering if she said the same thing to Lip. Wondering if his brother believed it, the way that Ian almost had. "You can do so much better than that!" he shouts, and he's talking about Lip, but he's also talking about himself, about all of them. They can all do better than charity that's only being thrown their way because it suits Frank somehow.

Lip's face twists, and he pushes himself up of the ground, dropping his half-smoked cigarette and letting it burn out amongst the gravel. "Yeah, well you know what?" he yells, pushing up into Ian's face. "Turns out a degree is worth _jack shit_ in the real world if you can't get a fucking job! I have applied for every single job I've seen Ian, for months. I can't even find a place to work for _free_; do you know how shit that feels?"

Ian backs up a little, outstretches his hands to keep Lip from actually starting a full blown fight. "Something will turn up," he says insistently and he knows he's being selfish, in a way. He'd thought they were going to get one last summer together before Lip went his own way for good, only coming home for holidays. He doesn't want Lip to leave, not yet, not when the summer is still stretching in front of them. He'd wanted to spend it hanging out with his brother, just messing around like when they were kids, but he supposes that time is long past already. "You don't need to take this one just because it's first."

Lip's quiet for a moment, and Ian can see how much of an effort it is for him, can see the tension in his brother's shoulders as he fights the urge to shout and rage and lash out. Instead, when Lip talks again his voice is quiet. "Remember when we went to meet Clayton? And I asked why you wouldn't tell him, that he was your dad?" Ian just nods, suddenly mute because how could he forget that day? He's confused as to what Lip's getting at. "I didn't get it," Lip carries on. "I didn't understand why you'd give all that up, to come back here." He waves his arm around at the rubble and garbage strewn about, discarded furniture and burnt out oil drums. "I mean, who'd do that right? But," he says, with a wry smile. "_You_ would, that's the point. Because you know what you want and you won't settle for less; you have since you were six years old and decided you wanted to be a soldier after Monica got you that Action Man for your birthday."

Ian looks away, a lump in his throat, because he doesn't get to have that any more, it all got thrown away and so Lip doesn't have a point at all because knowing what he wants has never got him anywhere. "Yeah, because that worked out so well," he mutters, scuffing his shoe against the ground and kicking at a rock.

"Well, I know you didn't get to do it, and that's shitty and I'm sorry," Lip says. "But the point is, you got right back up, created a whole new plan for yourself. And you're sticking to it, and that's amazing and I am so proud of you, I am. But _I'm not like you_, ok? I don't have all these big goals to achieve. All I want is a job that pays enough for me to get by, and maybe have some left over to give to Fiona. This job's as good as any."

"But—" Ian starts, and Lip just grins at him.

"Quit while you're ahead, bro," he says, a trace of his old cockiness back. "Agree to disagree and all that, yeah?"

Ian shifts uncomfortably. "If it's really what you want?" he says, and he knows that Lip can hear the question in his voice.

"Yup," Lip says. "Besides," he says, and he lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Washington chicks have got to be hot, right?"

* * *

Regardless of his truce with Lip, he corners Fiona that evening. She's watching some documentary on the TV in the living room, and he plonks down next to her, watching quietly until the ad break starts. As soon as the music for her show cuts out, he asks her the question that's been bugging him ever since Carl had told him about Lip.

"I don't get it," he says. "You stuck up for me when I turned her down. Why won't you do that for Lip?"

She sighs, pulling her legs up to her chest and then looking at him over her knees. "Ian, not everyone is the same. You didn't want that job, ok? You've got a whole other plan in motion. A _good_ plan. Besides," she pauses, takes a minute to consider her words. "I'll be honest; I like you being close enough for me to keep an eye on." She reaches out to ruffle his hair, like when he was little, and he lets her, enjoys the momentary comfort it gives. "So of course I stood up for you," she continues, rubbing the ends of his hair between her thumb and finger as she lets him go. "I always will, you know that. But Lip? Lip says he wants the job. He seems really happy about it, and that's the difference. I'm not going to try and stop him doing what he wants, any more than I'd stop _you_ doing that. You gotta make your own choices."

He sags back against the couch, because he knows he can't argue with that really, can't say that stopping Lip doing whatever he thinks is right is the right thing to do.

She squeezes his shoulder, smiles at him, and then gets up and moves into the kitchen. He watches her go, suddenly uneasy and trying to put his finger on why. He follows her out of the room, leans against the door jam as she starts running water into the sink. She shoves dirty dishes into the bowl, and there's something _off_ about her, Ian thinks. Something in the tense way that her shoulders are pulled in that just isn't quite right.

"Are you ok, Fi?"

She takes a moment before she responds, turning to look at him. "Yeah," she says. "Everything's fine."

He looks at her, and he's amazed he missed it before. She's smiling, but it's too wide somehow, too bright, the kind of smile that doesn't leave her mouth. Her eyes are bloodshot, and he wonders if she's been crying.

"Bullshit," he says shortly. "You're not ok at all."

"It's nothing," she says, defensively. Ian raises his eyebrows, and she sighs, leaning back against the counter. "Jimmy left," she says softly. "He's gone back to New York."

"_Left_?" Ian echoes. "What do you mean he— I thought you guys had sorted everything out, after the party and stuff?"

She shrugs. "So did I," she says, and she sounds flippant but Ian can see that she's feeling anything but. "We talked on the phone and he was really nice about it, y'know? Totally understood that it was just Frank and that it was nothing to do with the rest of us."

"So what changed?" Ian's almost afraid to ask, afraid to break down this wall that Fiona's got up, but he can't help it. Mickey Milkovich's face swims into view, looking at him, at all of them, like dirt, and the sick feeling from Saturday night returns.

"Fuck knows," Fiona says, her voice suddenly hard and bitter. "All I know is that Chip came to see me today—he sent his brother, can you believe that?—and had me sign all this paperwork to promise that I won't sue them. I mean, _really_?" She looks up at him, and the hurt and disbelief is written all over her face. "Do they seriously think I'd risk my fucking job for a lawsuit?"

"I can't believe he'd just leave like that," Ian says, and he knows it's not helpful, that it doesn't matter what he believes or expected, because he can tell from Fiona's face that it's true, that Jimmy really has left her, really has turned out to be just like every other guy his sister has ever put her trust in, and so he does the only thing he can and wraps his arms around her as tight as he can.

"He's gone, Ian," she says into his shoulder, and it turns into a sob halfway through. "He left. He left."

Ian doesn't know what to say.

* * *

They hold a leaving party for Lip on Friday. It's not so much a party as a gathering in the Alibi, but they invite everyone they can think of and Kev offers everyone free drinks for the first hour. He regrets it, thirty minutes in, when half the patronage are onto their third beers and still going strong.

Ian invites Robbie to come, eager both for his company and to introduce him to his family, and so they arrive together a little after eight. He does a quick scan of the room as they come in the door, picks out his siblings—and Frank, because of course Frank wouldn't have the decency to stay away—with ease. Fiona is sitting at the bar, knocking back shots with Veronica. She's laughing, full on belly laughs with her head flung back, and somehow that worries Ian far more than angry-Fiona or sad-Fiona. In-denial-Fiona has a self-destructive tendency that has never been fully let off the leash, and Ian really hopes that today isn't that day. He's not sure he can cope with that straight after Lip leaving.

"Ian!" Debbie spots him first, bounding up to him and thrusting a drink into his hand—soda, he notices, because Debbie is paranoid about him drinking too much—and then she notices Robbie and her entire demeanour changes. She pulls herself up a little taller, her shoulders back, and then she looks him up and down with a hungry look on her face that Ian doesn't like _at all._ "Robbie, this is my sister Debbie," he says. "My _kid_ sister," he adds pointedly. The look Debbie gives him in response could probably burn the flesh off the uninitiated, but Ian's lived with it for as long as he can remember and he learned to withstand it before she'd even hit double figures. She turns, flouncing away with so much attitude that it even shows in her _hair_, and Ian realises that Robbie's laughing.

"Jesus, are _all_ your sisters nuts?" he asks, and Ian laughs too.

"Pretty much," he says. "It's a family trait; no one escapes it."

They grab beers at the bar—Debbie glares at him again so he makes a point of downing his soda in three mouthfuls before he grabs his beer—and then they head over to the table where Carl and Lip are sitting. They're engrossed in a heated discussion about what sounds like a school project—Ian finds this somehow hilarious—and at first they don't notice the extra bodies at their table. Robbie's watching them curiously, a smile twitching at his lips, and Ian kicks him under the table.

Lip looks up first, his frown morphing into a grin when he sees it's Ian. "Hey, man," he says. "Starting to think you weren't coming."

"Are you kidding? You think I'd miss this?" Ian says. Lip's grin widens a little, and then Ian says, "It's not every day Kev gives away free beer. Gotta take what you can get." Lip laughs, not a full-bodied laugh but it's a genuine enough chuckle and Ian knows for sure that they're alright again.

They're interrupted by Carl shoving his chair out from the table, standing up so quickly that the table wobbles and beer sloshes out from the top of Ian and Robbie's glasses. "Hey, watch it," Lip says, and Carl scowls.

"It's _free_," he says. "You can just get more." He moves to walk away from the table, his head down and his shoulders turned in, and Ian grabs his arm as he passes.

"You ok?" he asks, his voice low. Carl looks back at the table, his eyes passing between Lip and Robbie, and then turns his attention back to Ian.

"I'm _fine_," he bites out. "Get off my ass." He yanks his arm out of Ian's grip, moves into the crowd, and Ian doesn't see him again for the rest of the night.

* * *

Lip leaves first thing on Saturday morning. He's hungover, and looks like death warmed up—both Fiona and Ian tell him so—but he manages to make the best of it, hugs them all close and promises Fiona for the third time that he'll call when they get there.

He hugs Ian the longest and the tightest, and Ian's suddenly struck by the fact that his brother is _leaving_, leaving town for good; his brother, who has been his closest friend since the day he was born is moving on and away and leaving Ian behind. He wonders if Lip's just had the same realisation too, because he pulls away a little, gripping Ian's shoulders tight. "You're gonna come visit, right?" he says, and for a brief moment he looks suddenly vulnerable for the first time in years. "'Cause I gotta have someone to share all my _Senator Jackson_ stories with." He grins, and Ian laughs.

"Yeah," he says. "Of course I will. Always wanted to visit D.C." He hasn't, and Lip knows he hasn't, but neither of them say that. Instead, the whole family follows Lip to the door, watches as he gets into the cab where Sammi is waiting, and then they smile and wave and cheer until the car drives away down the street and then disappears round the corner.


	7. Chapter 7

The next few weeks pass in a sort of surreal daze. They all seem to move forward without much of a fanfare, adjusting and adapting without even really talking about it. Ian _wants_ to talk about it, wants to sit down with Fiona and redraw the lines of responsibility, but Fiona is almost as far away right now as Lip is. She throws herself into everything far too hard, going to work early, coming back laden with fresh food for recipes she's found in magazines, spending half the night cleaning the house. He knows she's not ok, and he'd hazard a guess that she does too, but whenever he brings it up she just smiles, wide and fake, and tells him brightly that of course she's fine. Ian's not sure who she's trying to convince, him or herself. As far as he can tell, she's not doing a very good job of either.

Debbie's getting ready to leave for college, and Ian watches as the contents of her room start vanishing into boxes and trash bags. Her posters come down, leaving bright squares on the wall where the paper hasn't faded yet; her clothes get packed and donated and recycled; her quirky bits of room decoration get painstakingly wrapped in paper. She's got a new boyfriend, her phone glued to her hand as she taps out text messages without looking, and Ian wonders what will happen to him when she leaves. Not for the first time, he wonders how she and Carl have so suddenly grown up.

Ian starts sleeping again, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference to his mood. He's still jittery, like he's waiting for the next thing to go wrong, and he misses Lip's company even more than he'd expected. It's strange really, he muses to himself one night as he sits out on the front porch, smoking the last of the good weed that Lip had left behind, that he and Lip have lived apart for the best part of four years, between different colleges and ill-fated stints in the army and other places that Ian tries not to think about, but somehow this is the one that's hit him hardest. There's a permanence to it that wasn't there before, an understanding that Lip won't be coming home, that his home is somewhere else entirely. Ian hates it, but he supposes he doesn't have much room to complain, given that he's the one who left first.

Fiona comes out after a while, bringing them a beer each and sitting down beside him without a word. Ian presses his shoulder against hers and she pushes back a little, resting her head on his shoulder. They share the last of the joint—Ian's rolled it far too strong for either of their tastes really, force of habit—and stare out across the street, not really focused on anything in particular. There's a party going on somewhere, Ian can hear the thump of music in the distance, but it's still much too quiet for his liking. It's unsettling. There's been far too much silence lately, everyone tiptoeing around each other.

"All ok?" he asks her, taking the last draw on the joint and then grinding it out against the wood with the heel of his shoe.

"Hm?" Fiona says, distracted, and then she follows the motion of his head as he nods towards the house. "Oh, yeah," she says. "Liam's in bed, listening to one of those audio books you got him for his birthday. Debbie's packing."

"How's it going?" he asks, trying to keep the conversation going more than anything. He already knows how Debbie's packing is going, because he'd spent an hour that afternoon perched on the edge of her bed and chatting while she flew from one end of the room to the other, grabbing random things and shoving them haphazardly into boxes.

"Fine, I think," Fiona says. "Although I keep telling her, she doesn't need to take all of it, that it'll still be here when she comes home just like yours and Lip's was." Fiona frowns. "I don't think she believes me."

"It's not that," Ian says. "It's just that stuff's important to her. She wants it close."

"Yeah, well at this rate there'll be no room in Kev's truck for her," Fiona jokes weakly, and Ian laughs, harder than the humour warrants. He's hoping it's a sign that maybe Fiona's feeling better about things.

"Carl still out?" he says, and her frown returns, deeper this time.

"Yeah. I don't know what's going on with him lately; I hope he's not getting into trouble again. He's been working so hard."

"I'm sure it's nothing," he says, making his voice deliberately bright. "Just dumb teen boy stuff. Nothing you haven't seen before." He grins at her, and she returns the smile, although it doesn't quite meet her eyes.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," she says. Neither of them mentions all the times that stuff with any of them hasn't just been "dumb teen boy" stuff, has been actual serious teen boy stuff that Fiona was never really prepared for. Each of them lets the other enjoy the illusion that Carl's out smoking weed with a bunch of kids from school, and nothing more than that. Ian just hopes they're right.

* * *

Three weeks after he left for D.C., Lip calls. Ian's in bed, even though it's past eleven and he hasn't eaten or gone for his run, and he's almost asleep again when the annoying trill of his ring tone pulls him out of the haze. He doesn't look at the screen, just fumbles at the screen and then when the phone stops ringing, puts it to his ear and mumbles out a confused, "Hello?"

"Hey!" Lip's voice is cheerful, too loud, and Ian groans, sliding back down the bed, pulling the covers over his head. There's silence on the other end, Lip waiting for a response, and then a huff. "Ian? You there?"

"Yeah," Ian says, closing his eyes so he can focus on Lip's voice. "Yeah, I'm here."

"You ok?" He can hear the sudden concern in Lip's voice, the way the pitch suddenly gets higher as the volume gets lower and Ian sighs.

"I'm fine," he says, and he means it to come out biting but to his ears it just sounds tired. So tired. "I'm fine," he says again, and it's stronger this time. "What's up?"

"Nothing," Lip says, his voice returning to normal although Ian's pretty sure that the concern is still there. "I was just wondering, you're going back to school soon, right?"

"Um," Ian says, and he scrunches up his face, trying to remember the date. "Yeah, two weeks. Why?"

There's a pause, and then Lip's voice is bright and cheerful. Fake. "Well, you said you were gonna visit, right? Not much time left. I was thinking maybe next week?"

"Sure, whatever," Ian says.

"Sammi said she'd pay for flights for you, or if any of the others want to come—"

"No," Ian says sharply, sitting up so suddenly that he almost feels dizzy. "It's fine," he says firmly. "I've got some money saved, I'll get a bus." He doesn't want anything from Sammi, doesn't want any part of her grand plans or gestures. He'd rather spend a day on the bus than take her money.

"You sure, because—"

"I said it's fine," Ian insists, and Lip seems to know better than to argue.

"OK bud," he says, his voice annoyingly placating. "Well, just text me when you get the tickets and I'll come get you from the station, ok?"

* * *

The journey to D.C. is long and boring, and Ian almost regrets his refusal of the plane tickets. Almost. It takes the best part of a day to get there, and by the time he arrives he's stiff, tired and seriously out of his routine. It's not a good combination.

Lip is waiting for him as promised, but Ian's so crabby at that point that he'd probably have preferred the relative silence of a cab. Instead, Sammi drives them and talks the whole way, telling him some story about Sheila Jackson—it might be new, it might not, they've all started to run together in Ian's head—and Lip adds in his own anecdotes here and there and then informs Ian that he'll be meeting Sheila himself the following day. Ian seriously starts to question whether this trip was a good idea at all.

When they arrive at Sammi's apartment—Ian supposes that technically it's now Sammi-and-Lip's apartment, but that doesn't feel right at all—it's close to sunset, the last of the daylight leaving long shadows on the ground. They live four floors up, and in the elevator up Sammi chats excitedly about how Sheila helped her pick out some of the furniture and how some of it is _identical_ to Sheila's own furniture in the apartment she has out here. Ian meets Lip's eyes in a simultaneous eyeroll, and then he has to cover up his laughter in a fake coughing fit as Sammi eyes them in confusion. Lip slings his arm around Ian's shoulder, and Ian's pretty sure that until that moment he hadn't realised quite how much he'd missed his brother.

The apartment is more restrained than he'd imagined, Sammi's tales conjuring up images of over-sized fireplaces and whatever's passing for modern art these days. He's pleasantly surprised to find that it's mostly just an average apartment, save for the occasional large or out of place item that Sammi dutifully points out to him. He nods, smiles until his cheeks hurt, and then excuses himself to take his meds and go to bed. Lip shows him to where there's a spare bed made up in his own room.

"Sorry about Sammi," he says with a grimace, as soon as the door shuts behind them. "Likes the sound of her own voice."

"Don't apologise," Ian says as he swallows the handful of pills. "I'm not the one who has to live with her. How do you stand it?"

Lip laugh ruefully, rubbing his hand through his hair. "It's not so bad, actually. At work she's usually too busy fawning over Sheila to bother with me, and she's out most nights doing stuff with Chuckie. Some days I hardly even see her."

"Sounds ideal," Ian says dryly, and Lip grins.

"Could be worse, right?" he says. "Anyway, we'll try and stay clear of her as much as we can. You got some places you want to see?"

"A few," Ian says with a shrug. He'd looked up "places to see in Washington" on the internet a couple of days before, but he's really more than happy to go along with whatever Lip has planned.

"Cool, well Sammi's letting me have the day off tomorrow as long we promise to have dinner at Sheila's, so we can go anywhere you want."

"Ok," Ian says with a nod, and then stifles a yawn. "I'm gonna hit the sack," he says, and Lip nods.

"No problem," he says. "I'm gonna go eat and stuff, catch you in the morning."

* * *

The following day, Lip makes good on his promise and takes him into the city. Ian reels off the list that he'd ripped off from TripAdvisor, and Lip dutifully takes him up and down the National Mall, past memorials and into museums. Ian enjoys it, both the sights themselves and the time spent with just him and Lip. He makes a deal with himself to visit his brother more often.

The same can't be said for dinner with Sheila that evening. The senator seems nice enough he supposes, presenting them with platefuls of hors d'oeuvre when they're barely in the door, and then reeling off an impossible list of drinks she has on offer as soon as they're seated in her living room. Ian asks for a beer, and she starts off on another list, only to be interrupted by Lip who orders for both of them. What Ian gets can vaguely pass for beer he supposes, and he guesses he should probably be happy with that.

There's an awkward atmosphere at the dinner table as Sheila holds court, first quizzing Sammi about some poll or other that's just been released, and then turning her attentions onto Ian.

"So, Ian," she says. "Phillip tells me that you're training in physiotherapy."

"Um, yeah," Ian says, trying to sit up a little straighter and strangely aware of ensuring that his arms are hovering over the table instead of resting on it. "I want to work with veterans, you know. People who've been injured on active duty."

"Oh, that's such a wonderful thing to do," Sheila says, as though no-one's ever thought of it before. "How lovely."

Ian shifts in his chair. "Yeah, well I wanted to be in the army for a while, so next best thing, right?"

"Of course," Sheila says, and her voice grates unpleasantly. "What a shame you couldn't sign up."

Ian shoots a desperate look at Lip, but his brother is too busy talking to Sheila's daughter; he's clearly deploying his "on my best behaviour" pick-up lines while the girl is laughing politely but quite obviously not interested at all. Ian would find it amusing if he wasn't so uncomfortable with Sheila's attention.

"Yeah, it was," he says, hoping Sheila will drop it.

"And what happened there?" she asks. Clearly not dropping it, then.

"Just, um, health reasons," he says vaguely.

"Oh, I see," she says. "My Eddie, god rest his soul, was retired for ill-health. Such a _shame_."

There's a lull in conversation as the main course is served, and then Sheila continues where she left off as if the gap never happened.

"It's so nice to see young boys in your situation trying to better yourselves," she says. "I was saying to Phillip just last week, how _lucky_ he is that we had this opening for him."

Ian gapes at her, not entirely sure he's heard her correctly. "What do you mean?" he asks, trying to sound genuinely curious instead of the biting response he's got brewing in his mind.

"Well," she says, waving her fork. "Coming from where you do, it's hard to rise above it. So nice, to see some motivation."

"I don't think it's motivation that's the problem," Ian says coldly, and she turns to look directly at him, her eyes narrowed.

"_Really?_" she says, just as Lip hisses out a warning from Ian's other side.

"Really," Ian confirms. "I'd say the problem is more generational poverty, inadequate education and prejudice from those in power myself." He holds her gaze long enough to make his point clear, and then focuses his attention on his plate. "Lovely beef, Senator."

* * *

"I don't think I've ever seen her so mad," Lip says later, as they lie in almost darkness. "It was brilliant."

"Sorry," Ian says with a frown. "It just kind of slipped out."

"No, I mean it," Lip says. "'Bout time someone told these pricks what's what."

"For all the good it'll do," Ian mutters, and Lip sighs.

"Yeah, true I guess. Still, it was worth it for the look on her face."

It's funny, Ian thinks, how his brother has changed. Time was, Lip would have been the one with the witty retorts, putting the people above him down just for the sake of it. He supposes that silence is just the price you pay to keep your job, and he wonders how Lip puts up with it. He's not sure he ever could.

"Anyway," Lip's voice floats down from above. "What did you think to Karen?"

Ian laughs. "Oh, you mean the senator's daughter who is _clearly_ not interested in you? I thought she seemed pretty smart to be honest."

"Fuck you," Lip says good-naturedly. "Seriously though, you don't think she's into it?"

"No," Ian says. "She really isn't."

"You think she's maybe…y'know, into the other?"

Ian bursts out laughing. "So what, the only reason a girl might not want to touch your dick is because she's gay? Arrogant, much?"

"Whatever," Lip says, mock-offended. "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

* * *

They go sight-seeing again the next day, but this time it's cut short by an impromptu call from Sammi just before lunch-time. Lip answers it with a sigh and an exaggerated eyeroll, but he's soon listening intently while Ian has to try and guess what's happening with only Lip's side of the conversation to go on.

"Shit, really? Why?...No, I'm not saying that, just seems strange that's all…yeah well we can leave now if you want?...Dunno, half an hour, maybe? Depends on traffic…Right, ok. See you then." Lip hits the end call button with what seems to Ian to be unnecessary aggression, raking his hand through his hair before turning back to Ian.

"Something's come up," he says evasively, and then sighs when Ian's only response is to raise his eyebrows. "Apparently Sheila's got family visiting. Mickey Milkovich and his cousin. Sammi says they just turned up at our apartment, looking for us."

"For _us_?" Ian's sceptical. The last he checked, he and Mickey Milkovich were barely on acquaintance terms, and that had been _before_ Frank had tried to rob Jimmy's house. He can't think of a single reason why Mickey would make a special trip across town just to see him and his brother.

Lip shrugs. "'S what Sammi said. I'm just the messenger bro'."

They head to the nearest bus stop, and they're waiting there when Lip breaks the silence between them. "Look, I'm really sorry ok? I know you and him are like sworn enemies or whatever." He laughs uneasily at his own quip. "I had no idea he was gonna be here, I swear."

"It's fine," Ian says flatly.

"I mean, you don't have to come back. Sammi will have my ass if I don't, but it's not like she can fire _you,_ right?"

Ian would be lying if he said that he didn't consider it, didn't briefly entertain the possibility of turning back the way they had come and spending the rest of the day wandering the city alone, but then he remembers the last time he'd seen Mickey, remembers the disgust on the other man's face as Ian and his siblings had hauled Frank away in disgrace, and he can't bear to let him win, can't allow the possibility of Mickey thinking that Ian's too afraid to face him.

"No," he says firmly, just as their bus approaches the stop. "I'm coming with."

* * *

Mickey's cousin is a tall woman with sharp features and dark inquisitive eyes; Mickey introduces her as Svetlana and she smiles warmly at Ian. They all sit awkwardly around Sammi's big dining table for a short while, drinking coffee and making polite conversation—Ian's pleased to note that Svetlana has none of the airs of her cousin and is full of jovial chatter—and Ian is acutely aware of Mickey staring at him almost the whole time. The shame he had felt on the night of Jimmy's party returns in full force; his stomach starts to twist in anxiety.

As the coffees are finished and the conversation starts to die down, Svetlana takes a tight grip on Ian's shoulders and steers him towards the sofa in the living room, pushing him down to sit and then sitting down herself. She looks at him closely, up and down and up again, and Ian shifts uncomfortably. When she speaks though, her voice is soft.

"I hear a lot about you," she says, in her thick Russian accent.

Ian cringes. "I dread to think," he says. "Mickey's hardly my biggest fan."

"You think so?" she says, with a look that seems almost like amusement. "Maybe so. But I hear good things only. I hear you are very smart."

"Not really," Ian says, not really knowing how to take her choice in conversation topic; she seems to be digging for information as much as offering it. "Lip's the smart one, really. I'm just sort of…average, I guess."

She opens her mouth to reply, but before she can get the words out Mickey has crossed the room and is standing in front of them. Ian hates that he's sitting down, leaving Mickey with the appearance of towering over him, but somehow he can't bring himself to stand up and directly acknowledge Mickey's presence either. He looks down at his feet.

Mickey clears his throat and Ian's head jerks up automatically. Mickey's looking down on him, his face tense,, and Ian makes a point of meeting his gaze, looking him resolutely in the eye. Mickey blinks, and then clears his throat again.

"I, um. I hope things are good with you?" he says, his voice awkward and strangely stilted, like he's reciting words off a script. "Your family and shit?"

Ian's fairly certain that Mickey doesn't give two shits about his family, but he's wary of causing a scene in Sammi's apartment, a scene that could lose Lip his job. He nods curtly. "Everyone's good," he says, and to his own ears his voice suddenly sounds as stilted as Mickey's had. "Fiona got an employee award last month. She's doing some courses or something, so she can branch out a little." He hardens his stare a little, daring Mickey to bring up Jimmy's sudden departure.

Mickey doesn't take the bait. "That's great," he answers instead, still sounding awkward. "I'm guessing that would help out a lot."

"Yep," Ian says flippantly. "And it's not like she's got anything better to do these days, so…" He trails off deliberately, adds in a little shrug. Mickey flinches, and Ian's pretty sure that he's well aware of what Ian's trying to do.

"Guess so," Mickey says, and he turns abruptly back towards the kitchen, leaving Ian to glare after him.

Svetlana clears her throat beside him. "This one," she says, gesturing after Mickey as she shakes her head. "He is stupid fucking idiot." Ian notices though, that despite the harshness of her words, her face is soft, affectionate. It puzzles him a little, makes him wonder how Mickey can invoke such feelings from people like Svetlana or Jimmy when he behaves so rudely, when he treated Robbie and his family so badly. He doesn't understand it at all.

* * *

They spend the evening at Sheila's again that day—Ian's realising that this is a very common occurrence for Sammi and Lip—and they're unsurprisingly joined at dinner by Mickey and Svetlana. Sheila fawns over them both, Mickey in particular, but Mickey remains as reticent as ever and Ian wonders again if he's missing something somewhere.

They're playing video games after dinner when Ian gets the opportunity to investigate further; Sheila's got a big screen set up in a room across the hall from her main living room with a couple of games consoles underneath. It's Svetlana's idea, and Ian's well pas the point where he'd do anything to get out of the living room, away from Sheila's self-important monologues and Sammi's ingratiating encouragement. After some disagreement, they settle on Mario Kart—"that's nice and light-hearted," Sheila says after they decide, and Ian has to suppress a laugh because anyone who'd seen Mario Kart being played at the Gallagher house would _never_ call it light-hearted—and they're midway through the third race when he suddenly becomes aware of Mickey watching them from the doorway.

The lapse in attention is enough to send his kart spinning off the track, and Svetlana crows as she overtakes him, but Ian's lost interest in the game and instead has turned his attention on to Mickey.

"Are you trying to distract us?" he says, hoping his tone is as light and playful as he's intending.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Mickey says softly, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed in front of him. "Seems like you're fucking up all on your own anyway."

Ian huffs out a laugh. "Really?" he says, and turns deliberately back to look at the screen. He frowns, hoping Mickey doesn't see. Mickey's got a point; Svetlana's half a lap ahead of him now. He turns back to Mickey with a wide, fake smile. "I wouldn't worry," he says. "I'm good at coming back from behind."

"I don't doubt it," Mickey says, and Ian's not sure if he's imagining it but the other man's face seems to soften slightly. "But maybe sometimes you pay so much attention to where other people are that you forget to look at yourself."

Ian's vaguely aware that the music from the game has stopped, that Svetlana's attention is now focused on the exchange between him and Mickey rather than the screen, and he has to fight to keep his emotions from showing. "That's very presumptuous of you," he says lightly. "I mean, if we're going to start doing character analysis then I'm pretty sure I'd have a field day."

Mickey's lips quirk, just a tiny bit. "I'm sure you would," he says. "But that doesn't mean you'd get any of it right."

Ian laughs. "Sounds like a challenge," he grins, and then he nudges Svetlana. "Did you know," he says. "That the first time I met Mickey, he didn't speak to anyone all night? Just nursed his beer and glared at everyone who dared to come near him."

Svetlana giggles. "This I can believe," she says with a nod, and Ian looks up at Mickey expectantly. Instead of the angry expression he's expecting though, Mickey looks more like he's humouring Ian, like he's genuinely interested in hearing Ian's opinion of him. Ian quirks an eyebrow at him in challenge.

Mickey takes a moment before he speaks, and when he does his voice is softer than Ian's heard it before, soft enough that if Ian didn't know better he'd take it to be genuine. "I'm, uh. I'm not good with new people," Mickey says.

Ian hadn't expected that, genuine or not. "Well," he says. "If you can't find conversation to be made, with your multi-million dollar business and fancy lifestyle, then I'm not sure what that says for the rest of us."

"I just don't have that talent, I guess," Mickey says. "Being able to talk easily to strangers."

"Well you know what they say," Ian quips. "You'll never get better at anything unless you practice."

Mickey's looking at him intently, like he's mulling something over, but before he can reply Sheila's calling him from the other room. Mickey rolls his eyes and mutters a curse as he leaves, and Ian resumes his game with Svetlana and tries to ignore the curious glances she keeps throwing his way.

* * *

Lip has to work the next day, and Ian spends the first part of the morning pottering around in Sammi's apartment. He's feeling on edge from the lack of proper exercise while he's been away, and he's itching for a run, but he didn't bring his running gear and so he settles for cleaning instead.

The intercom buzzes just before eleven, and when he answers it he's greeted by Svetlana.

"Come down," she says brightly. "We go to lunch."

He takes a moment to think it over, before deciding that he is both hungry and stir-crazy, and he tells her to wait while he gets changed. He's downstairs within ten minutes, and she grins at him.

"Come on, orange boy," she teases. "I know a good place."

She's true to her word, showing Ian into a little Russian place three blocks down, and they make enthusiastic small talk while they wait for their food.

They're more than halfway through the meal when Ian brings Jimmy up. It's a question that's been niggling at him since he met Svetlana the day before, and the chance of an independent opinion on his sister's ex-boyfriend is too good to pass up.

"What do you know about Jimmy Lishman?"

Svetlana pauses with her fork halfway to her mouth, and frowns at him. "Mickey's friend Jimmy?" Ian nods, and she shrugs. "I do not really know him. But he seems a nice man. Mickey cares for him very much."

"Yeah, I can tell," Ian says. "It seems like he…takes care of him a lot?"

Svetlana nods. "They meet in college I think. Mickey says that Jimmy, he is soft. Easy target."

"But I guess that sometimes you need to let people make their own mistakes," Ian says, and Svetlana laughs.

"Not Mickey," she says. "If Mickey cares about you, he takes care of you. That's how he is."

"That's a good trait to have," Ian says quietly, and he means it. He might never have seen that side of Mickey, but he admires it, can relate to it. He thinks about how defensive he is of his own family, how much it hurts to see them struggle, and for the first time he feels like maybe he and Mickey have something in common.

"You know," Svetlana is saying, and Ian focuses back on what she's saying. "Just to show you, there was a girl Jimmy was with. Mickey say that she is bad news, bad family. Mickey thinks that she was looking for money. I think Mickey take care of that for Jimmy. Made it go away."

Ian blinks at her, his throat suddenly tight. All he can see is Fiona's face, her eyes red from crying. "That's a hell of an interference," he says, his voice choked. "How could Mickey know that she was bad news? Maybe she really liked Jimmy?"

Svetlana shrugs. "I only know what Mickey tells me. I don't know about the girl. I just know that he persuade Jimmy to leave her."

Ian's stomach clenches. "Well," he says, fighting to stay calm. "Maybe Jimmy didn't like her all that much then, huh?"

"Maybe no," Svetlana says. "But if so, makes it less of a challenge for Mickey to make him leave, yes?" Her voice is light-hearted, like it's funny, like it doesn't matter, and Ian feels sick, feels angry, feels sad, can't pick one to settle on and so they all swirl through him at once until his stomach is churning.

"I—I have to go," he says, pushing his chair back and pulling notes blindly out of his wallet. Svetlana squints up at him as he presses the money down onto the table, her face twisting in concern.

"Are you ok?" she asks, her voice worried and Ian nods.

"I'm fine," he manages to get out. "I just…I think maybe I'm coming down with something. Probably nothing. I just— I need to go." He steps round the table, rushes out of the restaurant and then runs all three blocks back to Sammi's, his mind racing and only able to form one thought.

Mickey had broken Fiona's heart.

* * *

He cries off dinner at Sheila's that evening, tells Lip he has a bad headache brewing. He feels almost guilty at the intense look of concern his brother gives him, wishes that every tiny ailment he reports didn't turn into a maybe-possibly-bipolar thing, but he's fairly certain he can't face dinner with Mickey Milkovich and have either of them come out of it unscathed. And if he's honest, he does have a pounding headache.

He finds some mindless trash to watch on television, and he's almost dozing off on the sofa when the buzz of the intercom rouses him; he groans and stretches and then slopes across the room to answer it.

"_It's Mickey_," floats through the handset, and Ian's stomach clenches painfully. "_Milkovich_," Mickey adds, as though Ian knows dozens of Mickeys and needs it clarified. He pinches the bridge of his nose, sighs and then buzzes Mickey up. He immediately wishes he hadn't, thinks of several retorts he might have given instead, but then it's too late and there's a hard rapping at the door of the apartment.

Mickey strides past him like he's on a mission, full of purpose, and Ian lets the door swing shut, trying to hide the renewed rage he feels at the sight of Mickey's face. He follows Mickey towards the living room, almost crashing into him when Mickey suddenly stops short and turns to face him.

"Your, um, your—Lip," he says, like he'd momentarily forgotten the name of Ian's brother. "Said you were sick." He narrows his eyes at Ian, leans forward a little bit to peer at his face. "You ok?"

"I'm _fine_," Ian says, as he moves past Mickey into the living room. The bite in his voice is mostly unintentional, but it's worth it for the momentary confusion that crosses Mickey's face.

Ian sits down on one of Sammi's expensive sofas and gestures for Mickey to do the same; Mickey moves into the room like he has the intention of doing just that but then stops short, turning to pace across the room instead. He crosses back and forth a few times, stopping every so often to look across at Ian. He's chewing at his lip, looks almost nervous, and the feeling is contagious. Ian's leg starts to tremble a little, just enough so that his foot picks up a rhythmic motion against the floor. He wishes Mickey would just say whatever it is he came to say and leave.

Mickey pauses again, looks right at him. There's a strange intensity in his eyes, and he opens his mouth, takes a breath like he's about to say something, and then closes it again, pulling his lip back between his teeth and crossing the room several more times. Ian's foot starts tapping harder.

"I—" Mickey says and then stops, stops moving entirely and starts rubbing at his mouth with his thumb. "Look," he says, dropping his thumb down and pushing his shoulders back. "I've tried, everything I can, not to do this ok? But no matter what, I just—" He throws his hands up in a vague gesture of defeat and Ian opens his mouth to ask him what the fuck is going on but Mickey holds his hand up and takes another deep breath before continuing. "No, will you just. Fuck. Just let me speak. I—I think that. There's something about you, and I—" He stops again, rakes his hands through his hair. "I admire you, ok? I really do, I have pretty much since we met. I like you a lot."

Ian's mouth drops open in astonishment, but if Mickey notices he doesn't acknowledge it; if anything he seems to be on a roll now that he's started. "And I mean," he continues. "It goes without saying that me being here goes against everything, against my family and my friends _and_ my better judgement, but I've tried to stop myself feeling this way, and nothing is working. So, I was wondering, if you—if you and I—if we could maybe go out or some shit like that." He stops, his eyes darting about the room before finally flicking up to meet Ian's. They're strangely open in a way that Ian hasn't seen Mickey look before.

There's anger rushing through Ian, the kind that feels like it's about to explode out of him, but it's swiftly followed by the sudden fear that that maybe he's done something to make Mickey feel this way, that somehow he's led Mickey on. That's what he does, after all, or used to at least. Made men feel like he was interested, like they were special enough to receive his attention. That had been his life. Maybe he's not as free of it as he thought.

"Um," he says, and his voice sounds strangely hoarse. He clears his throat, takes a breath and tries again. Mickey's looking at him expectantly, waiting for an answer, and Ian clenches his fists as he tries to reign in his emotions. "I— No. Thank you. I'm sorry, if I've done something to make you feel this way, if I've— If I gave you the wrong idea. I honestly didn't mean to."

Mickey blinks at him. "That's it? That's all you're gonna say?"

There's another surge of anger inside Ian, and he can't hold it in; he stands up from the sofa and takes a step towards Mickey. "Well, what did you expect?" he says, and he tries to keep his voice calm but it doesn't really work; it rises as he speaks until it's almost a shout. "You come in here, tell me you like me against your better judgement or whatever, and you think I'm actually going to respond well to that? You want me to fall at your feet? How— Just how can you expect that?"

"What did _you_ expect?" Mickey retorts. "I've got responsibilities. People have expectations."

"Oh, like what?" Ian says, and he knows he's being harsh but he doesn't care. "Nice pretty wife, couple of kids to carry on the family name?"

Mickey stares at him for a second. "Yes," he says finally, as if that had been obvious.

Ian can't help but look at him incredulously. "Are you fucking serious? You _do_ know that this is the 21st century? No-one gives a shit about that stuff any more. You can do whatever the fuck you want, no-one's gonna stop you."

"Yeah, maybe that's how it is for you," Mickey says, and not for the first time Ian finds himself wondering, just for a second, what exactly there is going on in the world of Mickey Milkovich that he doesn't know about. It's fleeting though, because even as he thinks it, Mickey's back on the defensive. "And that's it? You're turning me down because I see things differently to you?"

"No," Ian says flatly. "I'm turning you down because how could I ever be with you, knowing what you've done? Knowing what you did to my sister." Mickey flinches, and Ian laughs humourlessly. "What, you gonna deny that you did it?"

"Why the fuck would I deny it?" Mickey throws back. His voice isn't raised as far as Ian's had been, but there's no mistaking the strength of feeling behind it. "I did everything I could to get Jimmy to leave Chicago, to forget about her. I was looking out for my friend, it wasn't about her."

"How can you say that?" Ian says in disbelief. "It wasn't about her? How could it _not _be about her?" Mickey opens his mouth, and Ian butts back in before Mickey even has a chance to speak. "You want me to tell you something about my sister?" he says, and he's willing himself to stop talking, his mouth to stop moving, but he's so angry now, so enraged by Mickey's casual disregard for the hurt he's caused Fiona that the words are falling out without him even meaning to. "My sister is worth ten of you, ok? She gave up everything for us, left school, worked any job she could get, stuff you can't even imagine. She didn't sleep, she helped us with homework and got us all through high school, wouldn't rest until we were all passing every class. She pushed Lip to go to college. She took care of me when—" He cuts himself off just in time, can't bear to let Mickey know even an inkling of what had happened, why Fiona had needed to take care of him when he was well past the age of needing it. "She took care of us," he says instead. "For years. And she finally had something, someone good and kind who she really liked and you? You couldn't let her have it could you?"

"But it wasn't about her," Mickey says again, but his conviction is nowhere near as strong this time. He shifts uncomfortably between his feet. "I was just doing what I thought was right."

Ian just shakes his head, huffing out a noise of disgust. "It doesn't matter anyway. Even before you did that, I had made up my mind about you, after I heard what you did to Robbie Pratt. How can you defend yourself against that?"

Mickey's eyebrows shoot up, and there's a sudden anger that Ian hadn't expected. "Are you fucking kidding me? What I— What _I _did to Robbie Pratt?"

"_Yes_," Ian says forcefully. "I know exactly what happened there, how he came to you for help and you refused. How his whole family is ruined now and you could have stopped it."

Mickey's face darkens further and he stalks towards Ian, backing him up against the wall. Ian's not sure if he's shrinking under the strength of Mickey's glare, or if the force of Mickey's anger is making the shorter man grow somehow, but either way Mickey's eyes seem just about level with his, dark and angry. "I don't shit on my friends," he hisses, and their faces are so close together that Ian can feel the heat of Mickey's breath as it passes over his skin.

He sets his jaw, glares back just as intently, refuses to back down even for a second. "I don't believe you," he sneers right back, and then he plants his hands on Mickey's chest and shoves him back _hard_. There's a sound in Mickey's throat that could almost be called a growl, and Ian gets a twisted sense of satisfaction from knowing that he's pissed the other man off.

For a brief moment Mickey looks hurt, his voice quiet when he speaks again. "That really what you think of me?" Ian forces himself not to react, lets the impassiveness of his face answer the question, and Mickey's own face hardens; he purses his lips and then pulls the top one into his mouth, baring his bottom row of teeth as he bites into it.

"Well maybe," he says, and there's an edge to his voice now, hard and cruel. "Maybe if I hadn't hurt your precious feelings by being so honest with you then maybe none of this shit would matter. Maybe if I'd come in here, made nice and flattered you. But I don't bullshit. I tell it how it is, and how it is right here is that I have every reason to want to steer clear of you. You and me," he says, gesturing between them. "We are worlds apart. Did you expect me to be happy about it, to throw a fucking parade?"

Ian swallows hard, wills away the feeling of humiliation that has tears burning at his eyes. "You're wrong," he says coldly. "You coming here like this only meant that I didn't have to feel bad about turning you down. There is quite literally _nothing_ you could say to me that would change my mind, because from the very first time we met you have been nothing but rude, arrogant and dismissive of everything and everyone you came across. I had barely even known you a month before I knew that you were the last man on earth that I would _ever_ want to be with."

Mickey doesn't react, doesn't even flinch, but there's a muscle in his jaw that tenses and then he nods stiffly. "Well then," he says, pulling himself up straighter. "Sorry to waste your time."

He pauses, his arm twitching as if he feels obliged to depart formally with a handshake, and then he gives an almost unnoticeable shake of his head, turns on his heel and leaves.

The door slams behind him, and Ian sags onto the sofa, his heart pounding in his chest. All the energy has drained out of him like he's just run a marathon, or gone three rounds in Lip's old fight club, and his breathing is fast, too fast, as he tries to process what in the hell just happened.


	8. Chapter 8

The first thing Ian does is raid Sammi's drinks cabinet. He's not really supposed to mix hard liquor with his meds, but he's pretty sure that right now his heart is beating fast enough for him to justify the sizeable glass of whiskey he pours as medicinal. He's not sure which emotion he's feeling strongest, anger, humiliation and confusion all seem to be taking their turn and he can't focus on any of them long enough to process it properly. He takes two mouthfuls in quick succession, savouring the burn and then the fuzzy feeling that starts to creep in on the edge of his brain.

Anger wins out first as he grips the glass almost too tight; anger at Mickey, at himself, at everything. At the way that Mickey so casually insulted him, his family, and then tried to pass it off as some weird, back-handed compliment. At the way Mickey had so carelessly disregarded Fiona's feelings, not even considering them as he worked to split her and Jimmy up. At the way that Ian feels like maybe he didn't react strongly enough, the way retorts are flooding into his mind now as he thinks of all the things he _should_ have said. At the way that maybe he did something to invite this.

He downs the rest of the glass in one go, pausing a beat and then hurling it across the kitchen as the rage suddenly boils up and over. It shatters against the wall, leaves glass all over the floor, and the loss of control scares him more than a little. He puts the bottle away before he can be tempted to drink more, to blot it all out; he's not giving Mickey Milkovich the satisfaction of sending him off the rails again. Then he sets about cleaning up the glass, sweeping the whole floor over and over until it's like it never happened. He can almost pretend that it didn't.

He takes a shower next, turning the water up almost as far as it will go and sagging against the wall, letting the water pound over his skin as his mind starts to wander. Unfortunately, what it wanders to is every interaction he's ever had with Mickey, picking them apart as he tries to work out where on earth Mickey's seeming hatred of him turned into…well, whatever _that_ had been tonight. He comes up blank, relives everything from _pity-bang_ and Mickey glaring at him while he stood dripping wet on Jimmy's doorstep to awkward arguments over dinner and stilted conversations during pool games, right up to Mickey looking at him like dirt as Ian tried to stop Frank from robbing Jimmy's house. He can't think of one instance, one moment, that could have made Mickey possibly think there was something between them, could've given him the wrong idea to this level and yet…there must have been _something._ There had to have been.

He's out and dressed when Sammi and Lip come back, Chuckie riding on Lip's back and looking like he's fighting to stay awake. It reminds Ian of coming home after days out when they were younger, him and Lip and Fiona carrying Liam and Carl and Debbie, and he yearns for a time when things seem so much simpler compared to now.

Lip deposits Chuckie into his room, and then collapses next to Ian on the sofa. "You ok?" he says, looking over at Ian with concern evident on his face. "How's your head?"

"Fine," Ian says. "Almost gone, pretty much." It's a lie, the headache that had been just enough to use as an almost-honest excuse to skip dinner at Sheila's is now a full blown jackhammer pounding in his head and he can already tell that he's not going to sleep tonight.

He doesn't want to open up though, it feels like if he's honest about that then the rest of it will come pouring out like an avalanche. He's not entirely sure why he doesn't want to tell Lip, why he's so ashamed about Mickey coming onto him, why he's keeping what Mickey did to Fiona a secret, but he just doesn't want to talk about it. He figures that's a good enough reason, for now.

He's not wrong about the lack of sleep, although for the sake of appearances he goes through the motions of going to bed, lying on the floor of Lip's room and staring at the ceiling. His mind churns all night, going over everything again and again, obsessively picking at details, rage bubbling away. He eventually gets up at just before five, figures that if he can't go for a run, he can at least try and walk off his bad mood.

* * *

He gets back a little after seven, mind a little clearer, feeling a little more positive, and he's intending to go up to the apartment, eat breakfast and take his meds and then try and get some sleep, but that all flies out of the window when he sees Mickey's waiting outside the building, leaning against the wall next to the door.

Ian's first instinct is to run, but then he forces himself to walk forwards instead, to push his shoulders back and make a show of not caring. He walks straight past Mickey, doesn't look at him or acknowledge him, and he's just about to put the key in the door when Mickey calls his name.

He pauses, doesn't actually turn, but he sees Mickey push himself off the wall in the corner of his eyes, can sense him walking towards him. "Gallagher," Mickey repeats, as if he's not sure if Ian heard him the first time, and Ian sighs and turns to looks at him.

Mickey looks like he hasn't slept any better than Ian did; he's bleary-eyed and hasn't bothered to style his hair, so it's lying at odd angles all over his head. Ian feels vindicated, just a little, that this is affecting Mickey to even a fraction of the degree that it is him.

Mickey stands awkwardly for a minute, not really looking at Ian, running a hand through his hair and scratching at his head, and then he looks up, squinting against the early-morning sun. "You got some time to talk?"

"What do you _want_, Mickey?" Ian says, his voice deliberately harsh, and Mickey blinks at him.

"I'm not asking you to change your mind about anything, if that's what you're thinking."

"Good," Ian says, unimpressed. He turns to lean sideways against the door frame, crossing his arms. Mickey doesn't say anything for a moment, and Ian raises a questioning eyebrow. He just wants to get this over with before the rage returns, before he does something he might regret. He's about to give up and go inside when Mickey speaks again.

"There's just some shit I want to straighten out, ok? You owe me that much."

"I don't owe you _anything_," Ian exclaims. "It was your fucked up decision to come over here last night, to say all that shit."

Mickey holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "OK, whatever. But there's stuff I need to set right, either way. Can we — Is there somewhere we can go to talk? Coffee maybe?" Mickey looks strangely awkward, rubbing his thumb across his lip as he talks. Ian blinks at him, and then frowns, pulling his eyebrows together as he looks sceptically at Mickey. "I mean it," Mickey says, looking him directly in the eye. "All I'm asking is for you to hear me out, nothing more."

Curiosity gets the better of him. "OK. But you better make it quick. _One_ coffee, and then I'm gone."

* * *

They find a coffee shop with unsurprising ease, and Ian's grateful for the fact that it's mostly empty. They buy their drinks—Mickey tries to pay for both and Ian turns him down point blank—and then sit across from each other at a table that's probably meant for four, but doesn't feel as intimate as the tiny tables designed for two. Whatever Mickey had said about this not being a rehash of last night, Ian's not in any rush to give him ideas.

There's an awkward silence for a minute or so, and then Ian gestures across the table at Mickey. "You said you wanted to talk, so talk. One coffee, like I said."

Mickey nods, and takes a deep breath. "So, um. Last night, you accused me of some stuff. And I'm not saying it was all untrue, but some of it you're wrong about and I think you should at least hear my side of things."

Ian's unimpressed. "So you _didn't_ convince Jimmy to leave Fiona then?"

Mickey frowns, and then he sets his mouth in a thin line. "No, that I did. Although, it wasn't quite as simple as you make it out to be, there were extenuating circumstances—"

"That meant you had to break my sister's heart?"

"_No_." Mickey's getting visibly frustrated and Ian's kind of enjoying seeing him squirm. It's less than he deserves, but Ian's happy to take whatever retribution he can get on Fiona's behalf. "I knew Jimmy liked her, ok? That was pretty obvious right from the start, but Jimmy's got a habit of getting infatuated with things, that's just what he does. So it didn't seem like a big deal, not until later. I figured it'd just burn out, like most of his shit does. But then I started to realise that it was more than that, this time. That he really liked her."

Whatever superior feeling Ian had been feeling, it quickly dissipates as anger replaces it. "What, and that was such a bad thing?"

"Not on its own," Mickey says with a shrug. "But I watched them together, and it didn't seem to me like she felt the same way about him."

Ian makes a noise in his throat, thinks back to how Fiona had agonised over her feelings for Jimmy, the way she'd been so afraid to let him in. The way she'd been proven right, in the end. "Easy for you to say," he says, taking a mouthful of coffee and then leaning back in his chair, arms folded.

"No, I mean it," Mickey says, his tone insistent. "I'm not just saying that because that's what I wanted, ok? I watched her, how she was with him. She was nice enough, all smiles and good nature, but she really didn't seem like she was in it for the long haul. And that's before you add in all the other shit, the stuff with your dad at Jimmy's party, the way your brother and sister were behaving every time I saw them. It was just a bad idea for him, all round."

"I don't think that was your decision to make." Ian's voice is cold, his throat tight. He thinks back to the party, remembers the burning shame as he and his siblings near enough dragged Frank out kicking and screaming. The last time Fiona had seen Jimmy.

"Yeah, well Jimmy's my friend. I look out for my friends, and it wouldn't be the first time I had to deal with some chick sniffing around for money."

Ian laughs, dry and humourless. "You think she was after his _money_?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Mickey says again, a defensive tone creeping into his voice. "Anyway, he had to go back to New York unexpectedly that week. When he did, me and Chip set about making clear to him just what a bad idea the whole thing was. It didn't take much; he was actually pretty easy to convince that she wasn't into him the way that he was her. He wanted to break it off himself, in person, but that would have been a bad idea, for all sorts of reasons. Chip said he'd take care of it."

"Oh, he took care of it alright," Ian says, starting to lose control of the rage he's been keeping leashed up. "He turned up at the clinic with some secrecy agreement to make sure she wouldn't sue them. Really thoughtful of you both." He pushes his chair back, stands up. "Well, if that's all then—"

"Wait." Mickey stands up too, reaches out to grab Ian's arm and then stops and pulls back before he makes contact. "That wasn't— It was the other thing, actually. About Robbie."

Ian hesitates, and hates that he wants to hear Mickey's version of events enough to stay. "Make it quick," he says as they both sit back down, and Mickey nods.

"I don't know what he told you," he says. "And I'm not gonna ask. I just want to put it to you from my side of things."

"OK," Ian says, sitting up straight in his chair now. The atmosphere between them is even colder than it had been to begin with, and Ian feels the need to retain at least an appearance of control.

"Well, we grew up together, dunno if he told you that. Our dads were good friends, not sure how they met but for as long as I can remember our families spent a lot of time together. Weekends, vacations, all sorts. Robbie's got a younger brother, I've got a younger sister, so me and him always ended up hanging out together. We were close, y'know? Like brothers, maybe."

Ian leans forward and takes another drink of his coffee, bites back the remark that's brewing about how he already knew that.

Mickey barely pauses for breath, the story flowing out of him easily. "So, um, when we started to get older, we didn't see so much of each other. They moved out of state for a while, and we all kind of drifted apart. But when we did get together, something was different. _He_ was different. I heard his dad talking to mine a few times, saying he'd fallen in with a bad crowd. My dad said that was just a bullshit excuse but—" He stops and shrugs, then takes a drink of his coffee before he continues. "Whatever it was, Robbie was drinking, hardly going to school, failing all his classes. His parents tried everything, grounded him, tried to stop him seeing his friends, even put him into some super strict boarding school, but that just seemed to make him worse. By the time I graduated high school he was into some pretty bad shit—he'd been arrested for possession a couple of times and his parents had paid for him to go to rehab to try and keep his record clean. It went on like that for years, this thing of him being clean, and then falling back off the wagon, fucking stuff up and his parents bailing him out. I could never figure out how they could afford it all, it had to cost a fortune, but it turned out it was all coming out of their company."

Ian has to consciously keep the look of shock off his face, but he feels it like a punch to the gut. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair, the possibility dawning for the first time that maybe Robbie hadn't been entirely honest with him. That maybe, on this count at least, Ian might be the one who's wrong.

If Mickey notices Ian's reaction, he doesn't stop to acknowledge it. He seems eager to get the story told as quickly as possible. "So, of course when all the markets went to shit, they were in a really bad position already, not that I knew that. First I heard was when they went into receivership, and I called them up to see if I could help. It was too late by then; they were on borrowed time as it was. The company folded and they were left with pretty much nothing."

"He said that he asked you for help," Ian says faintly, struggling to fit this new information with the Robbie that he knew. It didn't seem to mesh at all.

"Figures," Mickey says, smiling wryly. "Yeah, he came looking for money a few times that year, before they went under. He knew I'd just got access to a chunk of money from my trust fund. Told me it was for some business venture he need investment for. I gave him what he asked for, $5k each time, and I never saw it again. He told me it hadn't worked out, but it's more likely that he blew it on drugs and partying. He certainly didn't use a cent of it to help his parents."

There's a strange look on Mickey's face, somewhere between anger and regret, and Ian's suddenly hit with the certainty that he isn't lying about any of this. It's different to how it felt when Robbie gave his version, when he'd just believed his friend without much of a question. Now he desperately wants Mickey to be lying, wants that friendship he'd established with Robbie to be based on truth, but the more Mickey tells him, the less he can believe it.

"He came again, after the company went bust. I'd set his parents and brother up with jobs in one of our subsidiaries, and I figured he was after one for himself, but it was just more money he asked for. I asked him what it was for, and he came up with some bullshit excuse. I told him I couldn't just keep giving him money every time he asked. He was nice enough at first, but when he realised I was serious and wouldn't be talked round, he got pretty angry and stormed out. I tried to call him a couple of times, but in the end I just figured that was the end of our friendship, you know. Not that we had been much more than acquaintances for a while anyway. I just figured we wouldn't be seeing each other again. And we didn't, for years after that." Mickey pauses, looks at Ian for a minute. "Let me make something clear, ok? This next part has to do with my sister, and it's something that I have spent a lot of time and money keeping quiet. I'm hoping I can trust you to respect that?"

"Of course," Ian says softly.

"OK," Mickey says with a nod. So, about eighteen months ago, my sister went missing. She was in her third year of college, all going well, and then she just disappears of the face of the earth. Didn't call me, didn't return my messages or pick up my calls. I knew something was up, but the cops were having none of it. 'Lack of evidence' or whatever. No proof that something was going on, but I knew. Me and Mandy have always been close, ever since we were kids. The way things were, we had to be—" He stops suddenly, as if he's betrayed a confidence that he didn't mean to. For a brief moment, a look of what Ian can only describe as panic passes over his face, before Mickey gets control of it and continues.

"Anyway, we've never gone that long without contact, even if we're out of the country. It just doesn't happen. So I hired an investigator, who eventually managed to track her down and give me a location. When I got there, she was a mess. Off her face on god knows what, and looking like she hadn't eaten in weeks. Robbie was there with her, about as wasted as she was, although not so much that he didn't think to run as soon as he saw me. I was more worried about Mandy at that point anyway. I took her home and paid to get her into some fancy rehab centres until she sobered up. She was a mess, all bony and her eyes sunk in. She stayed there for a month, and I did everything I could to keep it out of the press—got a court order, paid off witnesses, you name it, I did it."

"Fuck, Mickey," Ian says, and it comes out almost like a breath because he had not been expecting this at all. Hadn't been expecting the way Mickey's face went soft when he talked about his sister, or the way his jaw clenched as he told Ian what Robbie had done to her. Hadn't been expecting for Robbie to be capable of something like this.

"Yeah," Mickey says, flicking his eyebrows up. "But, she got better, got herself clean again and went back to school. She told me afterwards that he'd just turned up to see her out of the blue, made out like it was some big reunion and how they should really celebrate. Of course, what he was really after was her trust fund—fucking prick literally showed up two days after her 21st birthday, making out like he was there to celebrate with her. She knew we weren't speaking any more, but I'd never told her why, didn't see the need to, so all she saw was an old friend wanting to do something nice for her. Got what he wanted there; they blew a fair chunk of her money in just a few weeks. I guess on top of that, he saw it as revenge on me, mixing Mandy up with all that shit. Could have fucking killed her." His jaw clenches again, and then Ian can almost see him swallow his anger down and force a smile. "Anyway, that's what happened. Think whatever you like, but at least you got the truth." He stands up, gestures at Ian's long-since-empty cup. "One coffee, right?"

"Mickey—"

"No, it's fine. Like I said, I wasn't here to change your mind. And hey, for what it's worth. If I got it wrong about your sister, the way she felt about Jimmy, then I'm sorry if she got hurt. It was never my intention, I can promise you that." He smiles, tight and almost sad. "Be seeing you, Gallagher," he says softly, and then he turns and walks away.

* * *

Ian doesn't see Mickey or Svetlana again for the rest of his visit; whether by luck or design they leave the same day that Mickey came to tell him about Robbie, and Ian doesn't hear about it until that evening when they go to Sheila's. The senator seems a bit put out about it, but Ian's beyond grateful. Although he misses Svetlana's company, he's willing to accept her absence as the price of not having to face Mickey again. He has no idea what he'd say, were he face-to-face with the other man again, how to express his disgust at Robbie's actions as he now knew them to be, his regret at believing Robbie's version of events without question, but also the still-burning anger at Mickey's part in the destruction of Fiona's happiness, the pride he had taken in it. Part of him thinks that it's probably best that he never sees Mickey again; he'd likely feel compelled to apologise and Ian doesn't want to give him the satisfaction, regardless of the fact that he'd been wrong about Robbie.

He leaves himself a couple of days later, steeling himself for another twenty-four hours of being tightly crammed into a bus. Lip comes with him to the station, and this goodbye feels somehow less awkward and final than the last.

"Seems like you're doing ok for yourself," Ian teases him, and Lip grins ruefully and rakes his hand through his hair.

"Could be worse, right? I got a decent job, place to stay."

"Lovely senator friend," Ian adds with a cheeky grin, and Lip laughs.

"Yeah, I reckon she's the price I gotta pay. It's mostly worth it."

"As long as you're happy," Ian says, and he means it. He's starting to see what Fiona meant; this job wasn't for him, would have driven him around the bend, but it seems to be suiting Lip just fine.

"Yup," Lip says. "Just make sure you come back to visit again, ok? There's only so many dinner parties I can cope with alone."

"Deal," Ian says, and then he grabs Lip, hugs him hard.

"Right, get on before it goes without you," Lip says with a grin. "And say hi to everyone for me."

Ian nods, boards the bus and finds his seat in just enough time to wave to Lip before it sets off. He settles back in his seat, closes his eyes, and tries to forget that this week ever happened.

* * *

The house is quiet when he gets home, and he finds Fiona in the kitchen with a pile of bills and a beer. She greets him with a grin and a tight hug, like he's been gone months instead of a week. He grabs a beer of his own and sits down at the table with her as she finishes sorting the bills into the order they need paid in.

"So, c'mon," she says, when the last one's in place. "How was your trip?"

"It was…good," he says, and he can tell from the way her eyebrows knit together that she's not convinced. "No, it was fine," he says hurriedly. "Just…Sammi's a lot to deal with, y'know?"

"Oh yeah," Fiona agrees, and leans forward. "But what about _Senator Jackson_?" she says, mimicking Sammi. "Don't tell me you were there a whole week without a meeting with her?"

"Yeah, no chance," Ian says with a grin. "Dinner nearly every night. She's…kinda like you'd expect a politician to be, I guess. Lots of opinions about stuff she knows jack about."

"Ain't that the truth," Fiona says. "And what else, you get to hang out with Lip? How's he doing?"

"He's doing great, actually," Ian says. "You were right not to stop him going. He's in his element out there. We did some tourist stuff, but he had to work some of the time. And—" He cuts himself off before he can let slip that Mickey was there, but Fiona's already looking at him questioningly. "Mickey was there," he says resignedly. "So we had to cut the second day short."

"Mickey? Well, that sucks," Fiona says. "Hope he didn't put a damper on your trip."

Ian sighs. "Not really," he says. "But we talked a little. He…came on to me." Fiona's eyebrows shoot up before she can stop them, and Ian laughs. "Don't worry, I turned him down. Not like I'm interested in him, right? But some stuff came out and…I think maybe I was wrong about Robbie."

"Really?" Fiona asks, and Ian just nods. He doesn't feel like sharing details, even if he hadn't promised Mickey to keep it a secret. He's too worried that stuff about Jimmy might get let slip along with it. "Well then," Fiona said. "You'll not be too bothered that he's left town then?"

"He did?"

"Yeah, he came by a couple of days ago looking for you. Said he'd had something come his way that he couldn't pass up, that he was heading out of town for a while."

Ian's not expecting the sheer sense of relief that washes over him at the prospect of not having to face Robbie, the realisation that he's not stuck with the choice of either pretending everything is fine or having to make it clear that he knows now what Robbie's done. Instead, he can just wipe Robbie out the same way he intends to do with Mickey, like none of it ever happened. He can just go back to college and pretend the summer was just a washout in which nothing out of the ordinary occurred. The thought's pretty appealing.

"Cool," he says, when he sees that Fiona's waiting for a response. "Anyway, how are things here?"

She shrugs. "Same as always," she says. "Debbie's pretty much ready to go next week. Carl's still being weird. Liam's still not an ounce of trouble. Maybe I'm finally getting it right?" She grins, and Ian thinks that maybe it looks a little less fake than it had the week before.

"And you?" he asks, and maybe the grin starts to look a little fake again.

"Oh, I'm good," she says. "Work's ok. I've, um, got a date tomorrow."

Ian can't help but smile. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," she says, like it's a decision she's only making just now. "I figure, I gotta move on, right? Fuck Jimmy. Who needs him?"

Ian raises his bottle, clinks it against hers. "I'll drink to that," he says. "To new starts."

"New starts," she echoes.

New starts, Ian thinks to himself. He can work with that.


End file.
